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Three Vassar Girls 



IN ITALY. 



A Holiday Excursion of Three College Girls 



THROUGH THE CLASSIC LANDS. 



LIZZIE W. CHAMPNEY, 

AUTHOR OF "A NEGLECTED CORNER OF EUROPE," "THREE VASSAR GIRLS ABROAD," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED BY "CHAMP," 

AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED ARTISTS. 



BOSTON: 

ESTES AND LAURIAT, PUBLISHERS, 

301-305 Washington Street. 
1886. 



Copyright, 1885, 
By Estes and Lauriat. 



All Rights Reserved. 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS J 

WASHINGTON! 







» { CAMBRIDGE, MASS.j « 

m 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 
\ 

I. The North of Italy .... .......... 1 1 

Milan 13 

Como . . 22 

Verona 22 

II. Venice .................... 33 

III. From Gondola and Balcony ....... . . -. . . 42 

IV. Venetian Art 55 

V. A Society Woman ................ 67 

VI. En Route for Rome 80 

Padua .................... 83 

Ferrara .-.■'.. 84 

Bologna ................... 87 

Pisa 94 

VII. Old Rome 96 

General View 96 

The Forum and the Capitol 103 

VIII. The Early Christians 115 

The Coliseum 115 

Mamertine Prison and the Catacombs . 124 

IX. A Letter from Florence 134 



VI CONTENTS. 

Chapter Page 

X. " Pleasures and Palaces " . 149 

Calliope's Studio 154 

St. Peter's and the Vatican 166 

XI. An Excursion to Tivoli and a Pilgrimage of the Churches 171 

XII. Naples 191 

Pompeii 200 

XIII. Last Excursions 206 

Sorrento 206 

Capri 206 

Paestum 210 

Baise 213 

XIV. Sicily 228 

Naples again 242 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Frontispiece PAGE 

Vassar Girl 1 1 

Victoria 12 

Nat ~~r . 13 

Bayard ......... 15 

Death of Bayard 19 

Gaston de Foix 23 

Last Supper. — Leonardo da Vinci . . 27 

The Guide 29 

Palazzo Bevilacqua 31 

Foot of Flagstaff 35 

Uncle Jonah 37 

Aunt Pen 38 

Ca d' Oro ........... 39 

Pigeons of St. Mark's 43 

Sciollo and Colleoni 45 

" Studying the bill of fare " .... 48 

Library of St. Mark's 49 

" She gazed at the Count calmly " . . 53 

"Copying the masterpieces " . . . . 56 

The Assumption 57 

Feast at the House of Levi .... 61 

Mrs. Richlands 63 

A Toccata at Mrs. Richlands' ... 68 

A Venetian Garden 69 

Venetian Glass 72 

Four-o'clock Tea 73 

Giotto's Frescos 81 

Castle of Ferrara 8s 

Calvin 89 

A Ravennese 92 

The Accident 93 

Leaning Tower 95 

The Campagna 96 



The Aventine . . 

The American in Rome 

The English Officer and his Daughter . 

Roman Forum 

Geese of the Capitol 

Wounded Gaul ......... 

Square of the Capitol 

Augustus . 

Agrippina . . . 

Virgil . . . 

Tomb of Cecilia Metella . . . . . 

A Pilgrim 

The Janitor of the Catacombs . . . 
The Arena of the Coliseum . . . . 

Hercules and Lion 

Frescos from the Catacombs of St. 

Agnes 

The Pyramid of Cestius ...... 

Appian Way . 

The Mamertine Prison ...... 

The Madonna 

The " Moses " of Michel Angelo . . 

LeoX . 

Savonarola 

Fra' Giuseppi 

Catherine de' Medici ....... 

" Fra Giuseppi has lost his nose " . . 
The Baptistery, Duomo, and Campanile 

In the Borghese Gardens 

Pitti Palace 

Gardens of the Vatican 

Remains of the Theatre of Marcellus . 
Villa Pamfili Doria 



PAGE 

97 
99 

[00 
[01 

cos 
[08 
[09 
:n 
12 
13 
17 

19 

:20 

[21 

>A 

[25 

27 
[29 

[30 
[31 
135 
[39 
[41 
[42 
[43 

145 
[.47 
[50 

[51 

[55 
'57 
'59 



Vlll 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Sleeping Model = . . 
Statues of Hygeia . . . 
Portico of Octavia . . . 

Pieta 

Loggia of the Vatican 
Chestnut-pedler . . . 
Blind Organ-grinder . . 

Tivoli . 

Temple of Hercules . . 
Temple of Vesta . . . 
The Wine- seller . . . 
Villa d'Este ..... 
At Santa Maria Maggiore 
St. Paul Basilica . . . 
San Clemente .... 
Rock of Terracina . . . 
Cigar-stump Seller . . 
Bronze Tripod from Pompeii 
Naples and Mount Vesuvius 
Venus of Capua .... 
Street of Graves .... 



PAGE 

161 
162 
163 
167 
169 
171 
172 

173 
176 
177 
179 
181 

183 
185 
189 
193 
195 
196 
197 
199 
201 



PAGE 

Dealer in Loves ......... 203 

The Temple of I sis . . . . . . . 205 

Bridge at Sorrento ....... 207 

An American Newspaper . . . . . 210 

Capri 2 1 1 

Grotto of Posilippo ....... 215 

The Intelligent Native ...... 218 

View of Pozzuoli ........ 219 

Haunts of the Cholera ...... 222 

Temple of Diana at Baise ..... 223 

The Fille-de-Chambre 230 

Palermo and Monte Pellegrino . . . 231 

Monreale 233 

The Cub 234 

The Solitary Gentleman 235 

The Marchioness 236 

" Mr. Hathaway stood with his hand 

upon the knob " 237 

" Aunt Pen threw up her hands in 

dismay " 23S 

" Under New England apple-trees " . 240 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



Three Vassar Girls in Italy. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE NORTH OF ITALY. 




Milan. — Como. — Verona. 

HE was a Vassar Girl, and that de- 
cided it. 

Aunt Pen had a prejudice against 

women doctors, and an idea that the 

entire profession wore divided skirts, 

rode bicycles, cut their hair short, and 

were spiritualistic trance mediums. 

Please understand she had this 

notion ; for since we have known Doctor Victoria Delavan our minds 

have suffered illumination. 

Aunt Pen said to me privately after our first interview, " Phcebe, 
she would hold her own with any of the old patroon families. I wish 
you had half her dignity. She carries her head as if she were a 
duchess." 

We were not surprised when we learned afterward that she is an 
heiress, and has taken up the study of medicine for the love of it, and 
in the hope of doing good. It was Professor Schneidemuskel who told 
us this, for Victoria seldom talks about herself. We really ought not 
to call her "Doctor" yet, for she is only a medical student at Zurich, 



12 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



and it will be some time before she obtains her degree, especially if she 
interrupts her course by trips like the present. But she does not seem 
in any haste to graduate. She says there is plenty of time; and I 
suppose she thinks that since the aim of all this study is to do good in 
the end, stopping to do it now is only so much clear gain. So when 
the Professor told her that there was a sick girl who needed to be 
taken to Italy for the winter and to have a regular course of treatment 

from a companion who should know more 
about medicine than an ordinary nurse, she 
locked up her books and came to us. Aunt 
Pen took to her at once on account of her 
prepossessing manners; Uncle Jonah liked 
her sparkling good humor; and I saw in 
her a pillar of strength, she was so self- 
reliant and energetic. Uncle Jonah and 
Aunt Pen are the dearest and best people 
in the world, but I have to decide every- 
thing for them ; and since I have become 
weak and nervous I have longed for some 
one to take the lead, say what must be done, 
and make me do it. Still, with all this in 
the favor of Doctor Victoria, I never could 
have felt the absolute confidence in her which I do now if she had not 
happened to mention that she was a Vassar girl. Then I knew her 
through and through, for I am a Vassar girl myself, though I have 
only just completed my Freshman year, and ought not to boast of 
having the college stamp at all ; but there is no bond among girls like 
the one of having been at Vassar. I suppose that possibly two veterans 
who had served under the first Napoleon might have something of the 
same feeling, but hot exactly. 

The winds that swept down from the Alps were becoming more 
and more glacial, and we left Zurich for Italy via Mont Cenis. It was 




VICTORIA. 



THE NORTH OF ITALY. 



13 



a long, cold journey, and the account which Uncle Jonah read aloud 

of Napoleon crossing the Alps seemed to make it drearier and colder. 

I was interested in the enterprise which has 

accomplished this piece of engineering, for 

the tunnel is the stupefaction of Europeans, 

many of whom predicted that it would never 

be finished. My Cousin Nat thinks he would 

rather have gone over the mountains with 

Napoleon ; but the rest of our party prefer the 

present mode of travelling. 

This reminds me that I have not mentioned 
Nat as yet. He is my cousin Nathaniel P. 
Willis Todd, aged fifteen, whom I am supposed 
to be preparing for college ; though with all our 
sight-seeing the lessons are sadly interrupted, 
and he rarely gets more than two or three read- 
ings from Caesar during the week. He mortally 
hates Latin ; and says he wishes Brutus had 
assassinated Caesar in his cradle, before he had ..._, 

' NAT. 

time to write his " Gallic Wars." 

I suppose that Turin was really the first Italian city that we 
passed through, but our first stop was at this lovely city of 




MILAN. 

Our first view gave us the cathedral with its forest of pinnacles, 
each one tipped with a statue, — nearly eight thousand, they say, in all. 
Nat said it made him think of Resurrection Day to see this host of 
worthies standing on tiptoe between earth and heaven, — all noble 
characters who have walked in white and earned a white stone in a 
double sense. Perhaps it sounds irreverent, but I know Nat did not 
mean it so ; for when we went inside, the choir were chanting "Te Deum 



H 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



Laudamus," and Nat whispered to me, " I told you so. Does n't it seem 
as if those marble men and women were singing, — 

' The glorious company of the Apostles praise Thee, 
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise Thee, 
The noble army of Martyrs praise Thee ' ? " 

Nat has his moments ; but for all his mimicry and love of teasing, I 
shall always believe from that glimpse that he has a very tender heart. 

Milan is so beautiful that I am sorry we are to stay here but a 
very few days. Victoria says it is hardly Italy yet ; but it is interesting 
enough for me. Uncle Jonah has given me this large book in which 
to write my impressions, and has promised to buy photographs of the 
places which interest me, to paste opposite the written page ; and I 
hope in this way to make a satisfactory record of our Italian winter. 

I almost wish that I knew less of what is coming ; the richness 
of the field oppresses me. I like Milan and would like to linger 
here a long time, for I feel 'as if I could contain what it has to give 
me ; but all Italy ! I turn to Mrs. Browning and read, — 

" ' Now tell us what is Italy? ' men ask ; 
And others answer, ' Virgil, Cicero, 
Catullus, Caesar.' ' What beside, to task 
The memory closer ? ' ' Why, Boccaccio, 
Dante, Petrarca, and if still the flask 
Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow, 
Angelo, Raphael, Pergolese, — all 

Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again 
The paints with fire of souls electrical, 
Or broke up heaven for music' " 

This, too, is only a small part of what we are to expect. If I 
could only really see understanding^ the things which I shall look at, 
this tour would be equal to a liberal education. 

Nat is talking now with Victoria. " The Chevalier Bayard was 
killed near Milan, was he not, Miss Delavan ? " 



THE NORTH OF ITALY. I J 

" Yes, Nat ; the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche fought twice 
before the city. Once, in the beginning of the reign of Louis XII., 
he led the French forces into the city, where he was taken prisoner 
by Ludovico Sforza, surnamed, from his swarthy complexion, ' the 
Moor.' He was released, and for several years did honor to knight- 
hood, showing all the virtues which Tennyson attributes to Sir 
Galahad. But Milan was also a city of doom for him, and he died 
fighting before it, on the 30th of April, 1524." 

There is a little silence, and then Nat says, " Tell me more about 
him, Miss Delavan, please ; " and Victoria answers, — 

" With all his renown he was a very modest man. When Francis I. 
wished to be made a knight by Bayard on his first battlefield, the 
soldier thought himself unworthy to bestow this degree upon his 
sovereign. But when the king insisted, Bayard replied, ' Assuredly, 
Sire, I will do it, since it is your pleasure ; ' and taking his sword, he 
added, ' Avail it as much as if I were Roland or Oliver, Godfrey or 
his brother Baldwin.' Little thought the self-distrustful knight that 
his own name would one day shine brighter upon the pages of chiv- 
alry than those which seemed to him so illustrious ! Who knows, 
Nat, but you may make a Bayard of yourself ? " 

" We don't have such chances nowadays ; but tell me about 
his death." 

" Francis I. was fighting in Italy against the forces of Charles V. 
of Spain, commanded by the traitor the Constable de Bourbon. 
Bayard had command of a small body of Frenchmen at the little 
village of Rebec near Milan, when the Spanish army came upon them 
and they were forced to retreat. Bayard was mortally wounded by a 
shot from an arquebuse, and was lifted from his saddle to the ground. 
A little company of his friends stood around him and the advance 
guard of the Spaniards came up, led by Bourbon, who paused, and, 
looking sadly down upon his old comrade, said, ' Bayard, my friend, 
I am sore distressed at your mishap. I will send in quest for the 



1 8 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

best surgeons in this country, and by God's help you will soon be 
healed.' But Bayard replied, ' My Lord, there is no pity for me. I 
die having done my duty ; but I have pity for you, to see you serving 
against your king, your country, and your oath.' " 

" Good for him ! Did Bourbon kill him? " 

" No ; he turned away abashed, and commanded that a tent should 
be placed over him, and that everything should be done for him that 
was possible ; but the good knight was so sorely wounded that he died 
in a few hours." 

" What became of Bourbon after that ? " 

" We shall hear of him again at Rome. There is another French 
knight, a companion and friend of Bayard, though more nobly born 
and for a time commander of all the French forces in Italy, who is 
associated with Milan." 

" Yes, I know, — Gaston de Foix ; we saw his statue at the Archaeo- 
logical Museum the other day, and I grubbed up all I could about 
him. He was killed at the Battle of Ravenna after he had gained it 
and had carried on such a campaign that he won for himself the title 
of the 'Thunderbolt of Italy.' I have no doubt his exploits were just 
as brilliant or more so than Bayard's, but some way we all love the 
gentle knight best." 

Victoria has actually succeeded in interesting Nat in history. I 
wonder whether she could do as much for Julius Caesar. I am afraid 
not. All of those old Romans are so far back that we don't realize 
that they lived at all. 

We have been to see Leonardo da Vinci's great picture, " The Last 
Supper," in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. I knew in 
advance that the painting was ruined, that the plaster had peeled off 
in parts, that an inundation had soaked away the colors, that the 
horses of the French soldiery stabled in the convent had kicked away 
the lower part of the picture, and that mould and restoration had done 
their worst to obliterate the masterpiece ; and yet I was not quite 




DEATH OF BAYARD. 



THE NORTH OF ITALY. 2 1 

prepared for the wreck which we were shown. My feeling was one 
of dumb rage and disappointment ; for I had seen the copy in the 
Royal Academy in London, — a copy made two hundred years ago, — 
and I realized what a treasure the world has lost. I believe the tears 
really came into my eyes, for Aunt Pen turned upon me indignantly 
with, — 

" Phoebe Todd, you don't mean to say that you see anything in 
that disgraceful old wall to make you cry ! If it were mine, I would 
have it thoroughly cleaned and kalsomined ; it 's too shabby for any- 
thing ! And how shameful in them to pretend that it is anything 
extraordinary ! " 

But while I looked, one part after another came out of the dimness ; 
the design was there if not the coloring, and one could see the varying 
expressions of grief, horror, and indignation with which the different 
disciples ask, " Lord, is it I ? " 

Nat was anxious to verify the tipping over of the salt-cellar by 
Judas in his surprise, which has ever since been an ill omen; and he 
found the queer description of the picture in broken English of which 
Mark Twain speaks : " Peter argumenting in a threatening and angrily 
condition at Judas Iscariot." I have left a bunch of violets in front 
of the noble statue of Da Vinci in the Square. I am glad to have 
seen this great picture, and yet sorry, — it preaches such a pathetic 
sermon of decay. I do not see why noble and beautiful things should 
not last forever, and I said so to Victoria. She replied with a 
quotation : — 

" I read on the porch of a palace bold, 

On a brazen tablet letters cast, 
' A house, though a million winters old, 

A house of earth comes down at last.' 
Then quarry thy rock from the crystal all, 
And build the dome which shall not fall." 



2 2 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

COMO. 

Last night we saw Don Giovanni at La Scala Theatre at Milan ; 
to-day we are looking across the lake at a scene for all the world like 
a theatrical drop-curtain. The water has that unnatural blue, the 
white villas are arranged for effect, even the dusty gray foliage of 
the olives and the dark greens of the walnuts are interspersed with 
an eye to contrast, and the row-boats go drifting by, — now merrily 
to the sound of gay music, and now languidly as in a dream. The 
mountains about the lake are much higher and steeper than I had 
imagined. There would not seem to be level space enough anywhere 
for a village ; but villages and even towns there are, which cut terraces 
for themselves or cling to the face of the cliffs. We saw them as 
we steamed around to Lecco at the head of the other arm of the 
lake. The white houses looked very picturesque, rising one above 
the other like the tiers of seats in an amphitheatre, but they must be 
very uncomfortable towns to live in. Aunt Pen said it reminded her 
of Kansas City ; but I do not think any of the rest of us were struck 
with the resemblance. 

We stopped on the way at Bellaggio, famed for its beautiful 
villas. We had the privilege of gazing from the outside at the Villa 
Giulia, owned by the King of the Belgians, to which visitors are not 
admitted, and of looking at a gallery of pictures belonging to a more 
hospitably inclined though less exalted personage. 

Here at Lecco we are staying at an inn called " II Croce di Malta," 
— the Maltese Cross. Nat says the name is a swindle, for he has not 
been able to discover anything Maltese about the place, not even 
a cat. 

VERONA. 

Poor Nat has had a severe disappointment. He wanted to visit 
Cremona and buy a violin there. I do not suppose that he really 



THE NORTH OF ITALY. 25 

expected to find one made by the Amati or the Stradivari, for the 
first family ceased to manufacture violins in 1620, and the latter in 
1728. But these celebrated manufacturers have shed such a lustre 
on their native city, that to have a genuine Cremona violin, be it of 
the ordinary factory kind, would have a distinguished sound. How- 
ever, Cremona lies too far to the southward to be directly on our route 
to Venice ; and so here we are at Verona with a very cross boy who 
will not be consoled for the loss of his fiddle. The city is a beautiful 
one, with stately palaces, one of which, with barred lower windows 
and a long balcony, I was sure was Juliet's home. I could imagine 
her leaning over the balustrade and talking with Romeo below. To 
be sure, the balcony jutted upon the street and not upon a garden ; 
but then, the garden might have been there in Capulets time. I felt 
so certain that I had discovered the home of the Capulets by a sort 
of presentiment, that I asked a little man at the door the name of the 
building only to find that it was the Palazzo Bevilacqua, and that 
the Capulets had much humbler quarters in an unimpressive house 
opening upon a stable court. The guide-book says that it is now an 
inn, and I had asked Uncle Jonah to take rooms there; but when I 
saw the place I decided that no amount of sentiment could make 
me wish to lodge there. I thought we must have mistaken our way, 
but our guide showed us the cap (the emblem of the family) carved 
in stone over the great gateway. It is interesting to me to know 
what these noble names mean. The de la Scala, whose beautiful 
tombs we have visited, derive their name from the word ladder ; and 
ladders were intertwined in the iron tracery that surrounded them. 
Nat was sure that they had something to do with a hook-and-ladder 
company ; and, indeed, the insignia of a bishop of that family, com- 
bined as the ladder was with a crosier and mitre, the latter looking 
a good deal like a fireman's helmet, might have made a very appro- 
priate decoration over an engine-house door. The de la Scala seem 
to have been noble clear through, and not banditti veneered with a 



26 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

pretence of nobility, like the Sforzas of Milan. Two of this family were 
patrons of Dante, — Can Grande, or the great dog (and one wonders 
why he bore such a name), and Bartolomeo, who is supposed to be the 
Escalus Prince of Verona whom Shakspeare mentions. 

We had a comical guide, who took us to see Juliet's tomb, and 
who spoke the drollest broken English. 

" Theese," said he, pointing to the sarcophagus, " is the spot where 
the lovely Juliet was gravied? 

We all looked blank enough ; and Aunt Pen exclaimed, " Dear me ! 
you don't mean to say that she was cooked in that stone dish by 
cannibals ! " 

Then it was the guide's turn to be puzzled, and to spread his hands 
and explain, — 

" No, Signora, not Anibal, Romeo; Juliet was gravied, — 'what you 
call him? — entombed, buried, — Juliet, the sweetheart of Romeo, of 
Shakspeare." 

; ' The sweetheart of Shakspeare, you unconscionable man!" Uncle 
Jonah exclaimed. " Ann Hathaway was Shakspeare's sweetheart. 
We saw her grave in England. This I understand you to represent 
as the tomb of Juliet Capulet ; don't mix things, and make your 
story any more improbable than it is. I have seen Romeo and Juliet 
repeatedly on the stage, and the tomb was not at all like this base 
fabrication. Why, man ! how could Juliet and the County Paris and 
Romeo and a lighted lantern, not to mention the skulls and bones 
of the dead-and-gone Capulets, all cram themselves into that water- 
trough ? It 's more than absurd ; it 's preposterous ! " And with 
an angry sniff Uncle Jonah turned indignantly away. 

The poor guide was so depressed that Victoria had to apologize for 
Shakspeare in order to cheer him up, and said that she believed 
the great dramatist had never been in Verona, 'or he would have 
drawn his scenes nearer to nature. The little man brightened, and 
said that Shakspeare was a great man. Some English tourists had 



THE NORTH OF ITALY. 



2 9 



given him a copy of " Romeo and Juliet," and he had committed a part 
of the play to memory. Would we like to hear him rehearse ? His 
speaking had usually great impression upon " ze English." Aunt and 
Uncle had gone ; but of course Nat and I 
wanted to hear him, and Victoria lingered, to 
please us. 

I cannot give his gestures, and they were 
the most comical part. He said that he had 
always felt that he had a talent for the stage, 
and had acted in the church miracle-plays 
when a boy. His favorite accompaniment to 
every line was to point jerkingly at the sky. 
He did not seem offended that we laughed, 
while he spoke, until the tears ran down our 
cheeks. Perhaps the tears atoned for the 
laughter, and he regarded it as merely hys- 
terical. His elocution made such " great im- 
pression " upon Nat that he quite rolled over 

into Juliet's tomb. The part chosen was Romeo's soliloquy in Capu- 
let's garden ; he ran on something like this : — 

" But, sofe ! what light tru yonder vindow bricks ? 
It ees ze yeast, and Juliet ees ze sone ! 
Arise, fair sone, onde keel ze enfious mun, 
Oo ees olready seek onde pell wiz grief, 
Zat zou her med art far more fear zan she. 




THE GUIDE. 



She spiks, yet she say nossing : wot of zat ? 

Her heye de corset ; I vill answer eet. 

I ame too boulde, 't is not to me she spik : 

Two of ze fairy star in all ze heffen 

Hafing some pizness do hentreat her heyes 

To zwinkle in zere — to zwinkle — in vat you call em'? " 

And as we from stress of too much emotion were quite unable to 
prompt him, he broke down utterly. 



30 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

He tried again, with Romeo's speech before he drinks the poison. 
This, he informed us, as it takes place at Juliet's tomb, the English- 
man who gave him the book had told him might come in very well 
in his duty as showman. Perhaps the donor of the book had given 
him some lessons, for he invariably prefixed a Cockney h to eyes 
and a few other words. 

This selection proved so extremely harrowing, that Nat remained 
in the sarcophagus, where he could give vent to his emotion by tum- 
bling and kicking unseen. The guide began by rolling his eyes 
horribly and stretching out his arms toward Victoria, who immediately 
retreated into the monastery as he cried, — 

" Heyes, look your last ! 
Harms, tek your last embraze ! " 

At the close of his speech he drew from his pocket a flask which I 
imagine contained something stronger than Veronese wine, and with 
a long draught which, had it been poison, must have been sufficient 
to kill ten Romeos, exclaimed, — 

" Thus with a keese I die ! " 

and sank impressively back into the sarcophagus, greatly to the sur- 
prise of Nat, who had not expected this ending, and had no mind to 
enact Juliet to such a heavy Romeo. 

I ought not to have given so much space to this comical incident ; 
for now I have no time to tell of our visit to the amphitheatre, erected, 
it is supposed, by Diocletian, — a great circus five hundred by four 
hundred feet, with dens for wild beasts, and an aqueduct for flooding 
the arena for naval battles. I would like to write something of the 
church of San Zenone, too, built in the exuberant Italian Gothic ; but 
other churches clamor for notice, for Verona is a thing of the past, 
and we are now in Venice. 




TALAZZO BEVILACQUA. 



CHAPTER II. 

VENICE. 

I was sure that I would be disappointed in Venice. I knew before- 
hand that it was one of those exaggerated and too much painted and 
written-up places which never hold their own with their reputation. 
But the moment we left the railroad station and entered a gondola we 
were in fairy-land. It was night, and there were the reflections of the 
lights in the canals, and the gondoliers and the tall mysterious palaces, 
the cupola of St. Mark's silhouetted against the moonlit sky, the wild 
cries and snatches of Italian songs, — the Venice of Byron and the 
painters. I think I was in a kind of trance until some one asked if I 
remembered the remark of the travelled fool, who, being asked how he 
liked Venice, replied that really he ought not to express an opinion, 
since there must have been an inundation prior to his arrival, for the 
city was under water during his entire stay ! The others are off sight- 
seeing to-day, but Verona tired me so, that they think I had better not 
attempt much gadding abroad as yet. So Victoria has pulled my couch 
to the window, and made me comfortable with wraps and guide-books 
and a tiny silver bell with which I can summon our Venetian maid 
Luisa when I want her. 

Just at present I do not wish her. I would rather lie here and 
write up my journal and paste in the photographs. Here is one from 
an altar-piece by one of the old masters which represents angels play- 
ing on triangles, bass-viols, banjos, and violins. It is a little startling 
to us who are accustomed to think of the harp as the only heavenly 



34 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



instrument. But after all I don't see why angels, if they play at all, 
should not have the best ; and the harp alone is not comparable to a 
full orchestra. Here in Italy all these worldly instruments are used in 
church choirs with very noble effect. But I think, on the whole, I '11 
not use that photograph, for it irritates Nat, reminding him of his lost 
fiddle. But this has nothing to do with Venice. And first I ought to 
describe our surroundings. We have taken apartments on the third 
floor of a palace, a princely but rather desolate building which they say 
was occupied long ago by one of the doges, or dukes, of Venice. The 
rooms are very high and chilly. This one has a tessellated marble 
floor, and a frescoed ceiling said to have been painted by one of 
Titian's pupils. The staircase is a very grand affair, entirely of white 
marble slabs, with a balustrade of gilded metal-work, the newel imitated 
from the base of one of the flag-masts in front of St. Mark's. Among 
other allegorical emblems I noticed that it bore representations of the 
winged lion of St. Mark. There is a balcony before my window, and 
across the narrow canal there looms another palace grander than this, 
with corridors on the second story open to the air, the story above 
supported by fluted pillars with beautiful arches, the spaces between 
the mouldings forming dark quatre-foils, and sharp triangles such as 
Ruskin describes in his "Stones of Venice." I am more interested in 
people than in architecture, and I wish I knew just which doge lived 
in this house, and the history of the artist who painted the ceiling. 
Perhaps the old doge had a daughter, and the artist fell in love with 
her, as they say Titian fell in love with Palma's daughter ; and perhaps 
while her father in his horned cap was going through the ceremony of 
marrying the Adriatic by casting into it from the ship " Bucentaur " a 
ring blessed by the Pope, the lovely Tessa, or Violante, or Cecilia 
stole down the marble staircase and eloped with the artist. But the 
doge could only have lived here before his election, for while he held 
the chief dignity he must have occupied the doges' palace ; and I do 
not envy him his life there under the watch of the grim Council of Ten, 




FOOT OF FLAGSTAFF. 



VENICE. 



37 



who could at any moment send him across the Bridge of Sighs to his 
death. Dear me, what romantic nonsense I am writing ! I had quite 
forgotten for the moment that Mr. Ho wells calls the Bridge of Sighs a 
" pathetic swindle," proves that it was not built till the end of the sixteenth 
century, and that no political offend- 
ers, but simply common criminals, 
went over it from their trial to prison. 

I can see a gentleman walking 
within the arcades of the palace op- 
posite. He is evidently an Italian, 
and has the bearing of a noble ; but 
then they all have that. Our gondo- 
lier last night might have been a de- 
scendant of the Foscari. 

I cannot see the water from 
where I lie, but Nat says that the 
palace steps opposite descend beneath 
it, and there is a row of green-and- 
white hitching-posts for gondolas in 
front of it. He said they looked like stalks of asparagus. 

Nat is a great tease, like most boys of his age, and likes nothing 
better than to excite interest in some particular subject and then, while 
pretending to give information, to go all around Robin Hood's barn 
talking in the most provoking manner of things about which one does 
not in the least care to hear. But in the main he is a good-natured 
boy. Uncle Jonah must have been like him in his youth, for he is as 
droll as droll can be. You will know my Uncle Jonah, if you ever see 
him, by his cherub wings. He is quite bald, with the exception of two 
little flame-shaped locks which remind one of the wings on Mercury's 
cap. When Uncle Jonah is excited, these locks bristle electrically; 
when he is ill or tired, they droop, lose their flamboyant character, and 
are only little meshes of gray hair. 




UNCLE JONAH. 



38 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 






WwWm 

m:--./' l iii ! iU:,iJw 



Aunt Pen is a well-preserved, good-natured, rather worldly-minded, 
ponderous woman. You have seen her often, shopping on Broadway 
and lunching at Purcell's. She is very fond of his Bath buns, and often 
makes extensive shopping excursions just as an excuse for dropping in 

at Purcell's for a cup of coffee. 
She always wears black satin 
dresses which fit as if she had been 
poured into them, with more or 
less jet trimming according to the 
occasion, and an immense seal-skin 
cloak in nearly all weathers. She 
is fond of pets, and Uncle Jonah 
or the maid or Nat has to carry 
her menagerie, which consists just 
now of two dogs, a pug and a skye, 
which are insanely jealous of each 
other ; some very accomplished ca- 
naries that we bought in Geneva, 
and an Angora cat from Paris, 
with a tail like the plume of Henri 
of Navarre, — by the way, that is 
what we call him. She wanted to 
buy some educated fleas; but Uncle Jonah mutinied, and she gave up 
the project. I am one of her pets. She told mother that I was 
killing myself with study at Vassar and must go abroad. I had 
gained twenty pounds and could not get into any of my old dresses. 
Aunt Pen was sure that I had contracted dropsy of the heart, and 
mother became anxious and let her take me to Paris, stipulating only 
that I was not on any account to be married to a foreign count. So 
far, we have not met one who was marriageable ; but my winter at 
Paris, with the dresses made by Monsieur le Mort, brought down my 
figure very satisfactorily to Aunt Pen. Some way, I could not stand 




AUNT PEN. 



VENICE. 4 1 

the long walks that I did at home, and when I attempted to climb the 
Righi last summer I gave out when only a third of the way ; and at 
Zurich I caught a dreadful cold, and the doctors say I must take care 
of myself. Aunt Pen thinks it is hearing Nat's Latin ; but Doctor 
Victoria has different ideas on the subject, and has had all the Paris 
costumes folded away, has purchased soft flannels and had some very 
pretty wrappers and loose travelling suits made for me which are twice 
as becoming as the Le Mort dresses. 

Aunt Pen is coming back now; I can hear her wheeze as she 
mounts the staircase. She fully expected to find elevators in Venice, 
and is indignant that there are none to be found. Doctor Victoria has 
come in with her. Aunt Pen always tires out in any excursion before the 
rest of the party, and has to be brought home. But I am glad Victoria 
has come ; and now she shall sit beside me and tell me all she has seen, 
and I will jot it down as she talks. In this way I mean to profit by 
the eyes and feet of all the family. 



CHAPTER III. 

FROM GONDOLA AND BALCONY. 

" What have I seen ? Oh, Phoebe, how can I tell you ! You 
must see it all yourself, for no description can give a picture of 
the Piazza of St. Mark, with its beautiful buildings, the shipping in 
the basin, the blue of the sky and the lagoon, and the changing pano- 
rama of the people. You shall go to-morrow if the weather is fine, 
for really the glorious sunshine makes out-of-doors warmer than this 
chilly interior." 

" Indeed, Victoria," I reply, " I have not been really comfortable 
all the morning. That little German stove of white porcelain might 
thaw the atmosphere of a small room, but it makes no impression 
whatever in this great hall." 

" I will have Luisa bring you a scaldino ; but first let us have a 
good game of 'peas porridge hot.' Exercise is better than artificial 
heat." 

" Certainly ; but while we are cuffing each other, tell me about 
St. Mark's, and I will compare impressions to-morrow." 

" You must not stay there long, for all the churches are mortally 
cold, and at St. Mark's you are liable to forget it, for it is the most 
bewitching church I was ever in, — the most sympathetic, I mean. The 
arches are not lofty ; the roof seems to brood over you like the sense 
of God's love ; there is no gaudy display of tinsel and gilding ; the 
mosaics are very rich, but harmonious and unostentatious, and the 
color is subdued and mysterious. Little twinkling lamps, suspended 



FROM GONDOLA AND BALCONY. 



43 



by gilt chains, glimmer here and there through colored glasses. 
The music is distant and sweet ; you see the incense curling as well 
as inhale it. It is the most poetic, dreamy place imaginable." 

" Your description is very enthusiastic ; but I don't seem to have 
any definite idea of how the church looks. I know it is not Gothic 
but Bvzantine, and that it is built 
in the form of a Greek cross, but 
that is all." 

" You saw the domes last 
night. There are five of them, 
each surmounted with a smaller 
onion-shaped one, and that by a 
jewelled weather-cock. Between 
the domes shoot airy pinnacles, 
enclosing statues, which, with the 
domes, add to the Eastern appear- 
ance of the building. The facade 
is very richly ornamented, and 
flocks of pigeons nestle in the 
cornices and flutter down to the 
pavement, to be fed by a pretty 
Venetian girl." 



" Yes, I know," I interrupted ; 
" one sees them always in pic- 
tures of Venice. I wonder why 
it is that the Venetians are so 
fond of doves." 

" There is a legend," Victoria explained, " that when Admiral 
Dandolo was besieging Candia in the early part of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, he received information from the island by means of carrier 
pigeons which enabled him to take the fortress. He sent these 
birds to Venice with the news of his victory, and they and their 




PIGEONS OF ST. MARK S. 



44 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



broods have been kept in the Piazza at the public expense ever 
since." 

Aunt Pen knitted her brows thoughtfully. " I don't believe that 
story," she remarked at length, with an air of profound conviction. 
"Whoever heard of pigeons living five hundred years!" 

I laughed ; but Victoria explained that these were the descendants 
of the Dandolo pigeons. Aunt brightened. " If that is true," she 
said, " I must have a pair of them to take to America. No ; I think 
I will send over a cage of them to your mother. She writes so many 
letters, they would be quite a saving in the way of postage." 

It was a long time before I could persuade her that the journey 
across the ocean might be too much for even the original Dandolo 
pigeons, and the information seemed to dampen her interest in every- 
thing she had seen that day; for she declared that she did not think 
much of St. Mark's. She was rather disappointed in it, to tell the 
truth ; for the acoustic properties were* not good, and in point of rich- 
ness it could not at all compare with the new opera-house at Paris. 
She confessed, however, that the Piazza was very pretty ; but why 
they should call it a Piazza, when it was no more like a veranda than 
Boston Common, but entirely unroofed and open to the sunlight, 
quite passed her comprehension. Victoria explained that piazza was 
the Italian word for square or place, and Aunt Pen dropped the sub- 
ject to inveigh against Italian cooking. She had not tasted it during 
her promenade, but she protested that all outdoors was perfumed 
with the scent of it. They were frying onions in the court below, 
and just beyond there was a cook-shop almost impossible to pass for 
the fumes of garlicky soup which issued from the door. The sight 
of clotted blood sold by the cupful made her sick ; and how any one 
not in the last stages of famine could eat boiled snails, was beyond 
explanation ! 

Uncle Jonah and Nat had stopped at a cafe for luncheon, but she 
could not be induced to set foot inside the establishment. To be 



FROM GONDOLA AND BALCONY. 47 

sure the slender repast which Luisa now served us, of croquettes 
mysteriously compounded, with a dessert of fruit and black coffee, 
was Italian in substance and preparation; but then we did not know 
too much of the secrets of our own kitchen. 

Nat burst in upon us soon after lunch : " Oh, Cousin Phcebe, you 
ought to have been with us ! We 've made the acquaintance of a 
prince ! " 

" Really ! Who is he ? " 

" I don't know. Father has his card, — II Dottore Arlechino Faca- 
napa — oh, no! those are the characters in the puppet-show we saw on 
the Piazza. A regular theatre of marionettes; beats Punch and Judy 
all to pieces ! I mean to buy the play, translate it, and make myself 
a set of the puppets, if you will help me." 

" That means, if I will translate the play and make the puppets, 
you will work them. Thank you ! We will finish the First Book of 
Caesar first. But what about the Prince ? " 

" Well, Phcebe, he was too ricochet for anything." (Nat meant 
recherche) " We saw him walking in front of the Ducal Palace and we 
knew he was a Gran' Signor something or other. He came into the 
cafe just after us. I was choking with laughter at a poor German 
who was studying the bill of fare, trying in vain to understand the 
name of a single dish ; but my merriment subsided, I can tell you, 
when I found father was in the same boat. Well, when the Prince 
noticed our perplexity, he came up and offered his services in English, 
with the prettiest air in the world, just like Facanapa in the puppet- 
show. You see there are strings that come down from the ceiling 
that jerk the left leg out, so. It makes a regular Beau Brummel 
bow." 

'•" Nathaniel Willis Todd ! what do you mean ? Strings from the 
ceiling that jerked the Count's leg ! You must be thinking of the 
torture-chambers of the Inquisition." 

" Who said anything about the Count's legs ? I was describing 



4 8 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



the way in which the puppets are worked. There ! don't look so like 
a martyr, and I'll go on. Father offered him a seat at our table and 
let him order the lunch. It was Number One ! but did n't it cost, 
though ? By the way, he is n't quite a prince, though he has the air 
of one; his card bore a crest, and — yes, this time in earnest — what 

it said was, ' Co. Prospero Tor- 
Ionia.' The ' Co.' stands for 
Conte, you know. Father told 
him that he had a letter to 
the Banker Tolonia at Rome, 
and asked him if he was re- 
lated to him ; and he said 
that was another branch of 
his family, that had gone into 
trade and disgraced the es- 
cutcheon. I should think the 
banker's millions might wash 
out the disgrace ; but the 
Prince, I mean the Conte, did 
not seem to feel so." 

" Does he live in Venice ? " 
" No ; in Sicily somewhere. 
He is going to Rome next week ; 
and when father said that we 
should, too, he hoped the acquaintance might be continued. He 
was almost too elegant, in his velvet coat and kid gloves ; I could n't 
help feeling that people must think that father was his butler and 
that I was a groom. He had a way of thrusting one hand inside 
the breast of his coat and holding the other arm behind him, which 
was tremendously statuesque. When in Venice, he lives — " 

" I know ; don't tell me. He lives in the palace just across the 
canal." 




" STUDYING THE BILL OF FARE. 




LIBRARY OF ST. MARK'S. 



FROM GONDOLA AND BALCONY. 5 1 

" How did you know ? " 

" I saw him walking just behind the arches. I recognized your 
description at once. To think the only time that a real live count 
has noticed our party I should have been cooped up at home ! " 

"You will have plenty of chances; he is going to take us to- 
morrow to see the pictures at the Accademia." 

" What condescension ! I am so overpowered by it that I fear 
I shall not be able to go." 

" You must. He said that we were the first Americans he had 
ever met, though he has been in England. He remarked, too, that 
he had heard a great deal about American young ladies, and was 
curious to see what they are like." 

" Then he must meet Victoria ; she is altogether a better specimen 
of the genus than I am." 

Nat continued his chatter. " And oh, Phcebe ! did Miss Delavan 
tell you about the pigeons ? How they came to Venice, I mean. 
They would be a good subject for a poem, now would n't they ? Put 
in plenty of bursting shot and shell, riddled banners, and broken 
masts, and I '11 speak it at the Academy. Then you can do the love- 
sick-maiden business. She might be a Christian captive in love with 
old Dandolo ; and she could send him a lock of her hair along with a 
map of the fortress. But don't overdo that part, or you '11 make it too 
heavy." 

" Yes ; I think that a carrier pigeon who had to struggle along with 
a military map and too much maiden-hair might find himself pretty 
heavily handicapped." 

" Good for you, Phcebe ! Leave out the maiden altogether ; only I 
thought you might like to have her leaning on the parapets, looking 
away over the blue ^Egean, — by the way, that was just what that 
Vassar girl was doing that we saw to-day — " 

" Vassar girl ! Another ! When and where did you see her ? 
How do you know that she was — " 



52 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

" Now, Cousin Phoebe, is n't that catechism about long enough ? 
We had gone around the Piazza to see the two Vulcans strike the 
hours on a bell over the clock-tower. And did you know that the 
face is divided after the old Italian fashion into twenty-four hours 
instead of twelve ? " 

" Well, well, what of it ? Tell me about the Vassar eirl." 

" My dear little cousin, don't get excited ! I am answering your 
questions in their regular order. You asked me when I saw her. By 
the clock in the Piazza, it was exactly twenty minutes past seventeen 
o'clock. She was standing in front of the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, 
staring up at it, with just the air of admiration with which the lovesick 
captive looked across the blue ^Egean at old Dandolo. By the way, 
did you know that that is considered one of the finest equestrian 
statues in existence?" 

" I don't care a fig for equestrian statues ! I want to know about 
her. Who was she ? " 

" Oh, come now! I have n't finished the original catechism. How 
did I know she was a Vassar girl ? In the first place, she was so 
uncommonly homely — " 

" Now, Nat, I suppose you mean to say that Victoria and I are 
hideous ! Very complimentary in you, I am sure ! " 

" My dear Phoebe, you were not at Vassar long enough to succumb 
to the chilling blight of the place, and Miss Delavan is such a start- 
ling exception that I have all along had my doubts about her being 
a Vassar girl at all. In the case of this young woman there was not 
the least doubt of it. She wore glasses, but she took them off to look 
at the statue, and she was so absorbed in her contemplations that 
she did not notice that we were all three staring at her. Now, who 
but a Vassar girl would be so taken up with a bronze or stone man 
as not to notice three living: ones ? " 

" Two and a half, you mean, Nat ; be accurate, my dear boy." 

" Phoebe, if you wish to hear the end of this adventure, don't 



FROM GONDOLA AND BALCONY. 



5. 



indulge in sarcasm ; it confuses my ideas and interrupts the flow of 
the narrative. After she had stared at old Colleoni awhile, she went 
around in front of the Library where the two granite columns are. 
one of which bears the Winged Lion of St. Mark, and the other, 
St. Theodore on a crocodile. You know St. Theodore was the patron 
of Venice before St. Mark, and 
he seems now to be the special 
patron of the gondoliers ; at any 
rate, they make his column 
their favorite lounging -place. 
Come to think of it, I be- 
lieve the gondola was modelled 
on the plan of the crocodile." 

" Nathaniel Todd, don't tease 
me any more ! You see how 
anxious I am to hear about her; 
perhaps she is some one whom 
I already know." 

" Ain't I telling you every 
detail ? How ungrateful you 
are ! She gazed at the two pil- 
lars with the same fixidity, but 

not for so long a time, for the « SHE gazed at the count calmly." 

gondoliers beheld in her their 

natural prey, and they sprang upon and would doubtless have torn 
her in pieces and carried her home in twenty different gondolas, if 
we had not rescued her and taken her to her hotel, which was quite 
near." 

" Did n't you ascertain her name ? " 

" No, my dear ; it is a characteristic of Vassar girls that they don't 
confide their names to three unknown gentlemen, even when they 
owe their lives to them." 




54 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



" Then tell me once for all how you knew she was a Vassar girl." 
" She had that air, Phcebe, — that nameless something. She gazed 

at the Count calmly, not in the least impressed by his impressiveness. 

You will find that I am right, for we are bound to see her again." 
" What did she talk about on her way to the hotel ? " 
" Venice, of course, and statues ; her heart is as stony as the 

nether millstone, and she is only interested in stone men. There are 

a good many sculptures at the Accademia; perhaps we shall see her 

there to-morrow." 



CHAPTER IV. 

VENETIAN ART. 

We have returned from the Academy. I have had a nap, and feel 
somewhat rested. Aunt Pen does not care a great deal for picture 
galleries. She found the Louvre a weariness of the flesh, and stipu- 
lated, when we talked of coming to Italy, that she should not be asked 
to admire pictures ; and when the Count was announced, Victoria 
produced a stupid-looking volume on the nervous system, and declined 
to go. So we formed a party of four, — Uncle Jonah, the Count, Nat, 
and I. We took a gondola to the Riva dei Schiavoni, and walked 
along it to the Piazza. Then I saw for the first time what Victoria 
had described, — the palaces and the facade of St. Mark's, with the 
bronze horses that have had such a wonderful history. If they could 
only talk as animals and statues do in fairy stories, they would tell us 
of how they once stood on Nero's triumphal arch and then on Trajan's, 
in old Rome, having been made for the Emperor by some Greek artist 
whose name is unknown now, though they are so beautiful that it was 
imagined they might be the work of Lysippus. Next, Constantine 
took them to Constantinople, and, 

" With eyes as bright as Phosphorus, 
They glared upon the Bosphorus," 

until Doge Dandolo, that fierce old fighter, won them from the Turk 
and brought them to Venice in 1204. After that it took no less a 
jockey than Napoleon to drive this remarkable four-in-hand to Paris, 



*» 



56 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



where they pawed the air impatiently for eighteen years over the 
triumphal arch in the Place de Carrousel, at the end of which period, 
with snorting nostrils and flowing manes, they galloped gladly back to 
Venice, and took up their stations again over the portals of the great 
cathedral. 

We did not go inside, but went directly to the Academy of Fine 
Arts, which is devoted almost exclusively to painters of the Venetian 




"COPYING THE MASTERPIECES." 



School, — Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, the two Palmas, Pordenone, 
and Giorgione. Artists were busy here and there, copying the old 
masterpieces in fresher colors. I was glad the Count was with us, for 
he seemed to know something of art, and explained the paintings. 
As I had formed no opinion of my own, I could only take refuge 
behind Ruskin ; and I found, after examining the masterpieces, that I 




THE ASSUMPTION. 



VENETIAN ART. 



59 



did not entirely agree with him. I was told that the " Presentation of 
the Virgin at the Temple," by Titian, is considered the finest picture in 
the Academy ; but I stood longer before his " Assumption," which is al- 
together wonderful. The Virgin is borne upward by myriads of cherub 
children as buoyant as so many little balloons. You can almost feel 
the rush of wind as they impel her upward, away from the pathetic reach- 
ing arms which stretch after her in vain. Mary's face and attitude are 
ecstatic. Titian has given us a mere symbol of what she sees, — a 
representation of Divine Love brooding over her, and angels bringing 
her crown ; but we know that Mary sees even more than this, for all 
heaven is reflected in her rapt gaze. I looked at the picture so long, 
that I forgot the place and my companions. When I came out of my 
vision the others were talking about Titian. Nat was jotting down in 
his note-book the fact that he was born in 1477, a little after Michael 
Angelo, and before Raphael, at Cadore, a village in the wild mountains. 
I knew that he studied under Bellini and Palma, and that Giorgione 
was his rival at first, and Pordenone later on, when both painted in the 
Council Hall ; but I had never heard the story of his beautiful domes- 
tic life as the Count told it to us. He lived near the Church of the 
Jesuits, just aside from the Fondamente Nuove, in a house which he 
made more and more beautiful as wealth came to him. But his loved 
wife Cecilia died when he was in middle life, leaving him with three 
little children, Pomponio, Orazio, and Lavinia; and after that, art was 
his only joy. He sent to Cadore for his sister Orsa, who came to him 
and took Cecilia's place as guardian of his children. Lavinia grew up 
into a superb beauty, as we know from the many pictures of her which 
her father has handed down, — especially the one in the Berlin 
Museum, which represents her in a yellow silk dress, with a jewelled 
diadem, necklace, and girdle, supporting with both hands a silver 
dish filled with fruit and flowers. Titian's house had a beautiful 
garden stretching down to the water's edge, and in this garden it is 
said he was fond of entertaining very good company. I can fancy 



60 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

what it looked like, with the table spread under the shade of the vines, 
and the poet Ariosto, Titian's friend, dictating sonnets for Lavinia to 
sing to the organ which her father purchased for her. and Aretino, 
the sculptor and scholar, helping Pomponio with his Latin. 

A curious letter of Aretino to the little Pomponio still exists. 

" Pomponio Monsignorino," he writes to the little boy who is away 
with his relatives in the wild mountains of Cadore, " it is time that you 
should return from the country, where there is no school. So come ; 
and now that you are twelve years old, you shall write some exercises 
in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin, that will astonish the doctors, as 
the pictures astonish the artists of Italy, which are painted by Messer, 
your father. So no more, but keep yourself warm and in good 
appetite." 

It is a pity that Pomponio grew up a dissolute fellow, disgracing 
the priests habit which he assumed. But Orazio and Lavinia were 
the comfort of their father's old age. At seventy, Titian painted 
incessantly ; besides his great masterpieces, finding time for portraits of 
many of the eminent men of his time, while nearly all the monarchs of 
the period were his patrons. At seventy-seven he went to Rome to 
study Michael Angelo's method, and at ninety-nine he said that he was 
only beginning to learn the art of painting. That was the year that he 
died of the plague, still actively engaged in work, with his natural force 
unabated, as was proved by his last picture, " The Entombment," 
finished the year he died. We are going sometime to the Frari, or 
Church of the Franciscans, to see his tomb. 

We looked at a great many other pictures ; but Titian is surely the 
king of the Venetian School. Nat was right in his belief that we would 
meet the unknown, supposititious Vassar girl at the Academy. W T hile 
we were admiring " The Entombment," he gently jogged my elbow 
and remarked, " There, was n't I right ? Is n't she a fright, though ? " 

" Who ? " I asked, — " Mary ? " thinking that possibly he referred to 
one of the personages in the pictures. 



VENETIAN ART. 



63 



" Hush ! " said Nat ; " the unknown beauty from Vassar." 

Really, the girl was painfully plain, tall and ungainly, with a high 
forehead, from which the hair was brushed back in an uncompromising, 
don't-care way, which seemed to say, " I know I am homely, and there 
is no use disguising the matter ; so there ! " 

Uncle Jonah bowed to her, and her face lit up with such pleasant 
and grateful recognition, that he brought me forward, saying, " Allow 
me to present my niece, Miss Phcebe Todd." 

The girl held out her hand frankly. " I have noticed you," she 
said. " You seem to like Titian." 

From that we drifted into conversation about the Venetian painters, 
and I told her that I could not quite comprehend Ruskin's enthusiasm 
for Giorgione, but I could see that 
Tintoretto was a great colorist, 
though no doubt an artist could 
more fully appreciate the grand 
harmony of his rich, low-toned 
pictures. I thought that she must 
be an artist ; and so she was, but 
not a painter. She told us that 
she was trying to be a sculptor, and 
had a little studio in Rome, but 
that she had come to Venice to 
make a portrait bust of the baby 
boy of a certain Mrs. Richlands, 

a European American who has given up her native land, and 
roams about from city to city in what seems to me a very desolate 
and homeless way. Our new acquaintance said that her patroness 
was in the next room, and asked permission to introduce her, as 
she was always glad to meet compatriots. Then she ran away and 
brought her in, — a stylish woman, with a worldly manner and a 
self-satisfied smile ; but her speech was kinder than her looks, for she 




MRS. RICHLANDS. 



64 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

was very polite to us all, and especially to me. For all that Nat bad 
said of the unprepossessing appearance of the supposed Vassar girl, 
he was really interested in her, and they were soon talking together 
quite freely. I heard him say that his favorite painter was Paul 
Veronese ; and I was rather ashamed of Nat's taste, for Veronese de- 
lights in rather gaudy color, bright reds, yellows, and blues, and he 
takes a special pleasure in depicting people eating. Some one has 
said, that to tell a story that will amuse children, you must put a great 
deal of dinner-party in it. It seems to me that many grown people 
have not advanced beyond that stage, and I said so. 

Nat was a little nettled. " I am sure, Cousin Phoebe," he said, " that 
you like a party better than anything else, and I do not see that a 
party without a dinner is so very superior to a party with one." 

Mrs. Richlands laughed, and said Nat had the right idea, and 
that we must all come to her receptions, for she always began them 
with a supper; people were so much more amiable after a good 
meal. The Count paid very particular attention, and I could see that 
he meant to avail himself of the invitation ; but Nat's friend explained 
that Veronese had orders to paint four great feasts for different con- 
vent refectories. One of these pictures, " The Marriage of Cana," we 
saw at the Louvre ; and here we found another of these famous ban- 
quets, " The Feast in the House of Levi." As we stood before it 
I asked Nat to explain, if he could, why he liked it, and he ran on 
something in this style : — 

" Why, you see, it is so downright jolly and real, and every one 
seems to be having such a good time. There is an abundance to eat 
and drink ; even the servants are stowing away their share. The men- 
at-arms on the staircase are stuffing themselves, the children have 
eaten all they want, and even the dog has a well-fed, lazy air. Just 
look at that plate of food that the old party is cutting up for Christ ! 
No wonder the Pharisees called him gluttonous, if they saw 7 that 
dish. And Levi is scolding the butler for not bringing up more wine. 



VENETIAN ART. 65 

I can hear him now, ' Go to, Sirrah ! Hast thou not heard that at the 
marriage of Cana there were six water-pots of wine, containing two or 
three firkins apiece? Why, then, to the dishonor of my house, hast 
thou set forth but four? Draw forth from the oldest of my father's 
vineyards, and bring up of the Falernian that Herod brought me from 
Rome.' " 

Our new acquaintance seemed much pleased, and declared that 
Nat was right, and that the scene was very like a Roman orgie. It is 
not often that Nat shows to such good advantage, and I reported his 
remarks as nearly as I could remember them to Victoria when I came 
home. " Yes," she replied, " Paul Veronese depicts the senses ; to see 
the soul of man we must look at the paintings of the Florentine 
School. I have no doubt that Veronese painted up to his highest 
conceptions ; but do you think, Phcebe, that the dear Christ would 
have assisted at a scene like that? It seems to me the halo about 
his head would have grown dim with sorrow, or lurid and terrible, at 
such a carousal." 

I told Victoria all about our meeting in the Academy, and then for 
the first time we realized that after all the Vassar girl had not given 
us her name. 

" From your description, I believe she is Calliope Carter," Victoria 
remarked, with an air of complete conviction. " I don't think that 
there is such another absent-minded creature on the whole list of 
alumni. She was from the West, somewhere. Her father was the 
captain of the first Mississippi steamboat that carried a calliope, and 
he was so entranced with its strains that he named his daughter for 
it. At least, that was the tradition commonly believed at college. 
Some one started the name Fog-horn, in derision, but. she was too 
gentle and kind to keep a nickname ; and although she was very 
queer, we liked and respected her, and believed in a vague way that 
her eccentricity was a proof of latent talent. And so she has blos- 
somed into a sculptor ! Well, I am not surprised." 



66 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

" But, Victoria, we do not even know to a certainty that she is a 
Vassar girl at all. That was only Nat's supposition." 

Still, Victoria's belief was unshaken, and she decided to go with me 
when I went to call upon our new acquaintance. 

I was completely exhausted after so much sight-seeing; the staring 
upward, too, tired my neck and made me dizzy, and I was glad enough 
to get back to my couch. Victoria tucked me up with an air that was 
both maternal and professional. 

" I have been studying up your case while you were gone," she 
said; "you must have hot milk, raw eggs, and go to bed every night 
at eight o'clock." 

" But Mrs. Richlands has invited us to her reception to-morrow 
evening, and I want to go so much. You must really let me this 
time." 

" We will see how you are to-morrow. Shut your eyes now, and 
go to sleep." 

I am going to shock Victoria. She thinks I am a great deal more 
sensible than I am ; but one might as well be honest at the start. I am 
afraid I am a very recreant Vassar girl. All of the alumni that I have 
met have elevated aims, and are interested in philanthropy or science 
or art. Now I don't care a pin for any of these things. I adore 
society ; and I mean to be a society woman ! That assertion, now that 
I have written it, looks so very depraved that I am ashamed of it; but 
it's the truth, nevertheless. I would exult in giving elegant dinners 
and lawn-parties and fetes, and having people boast of being invited 
to one of my very choice receptions. Really, it would be the life of a 
queen, — for what else are queens good for ? I wonder whether Victoria 
will give me up when she knows to what a low standard I aspire. 



CHAPTER V. 

A SOCIETY WOMAN. 

The reception at Mrs. Richlands' was delightful. Victoria would 
have gone, but Uncle Jonah had an attack of sciatica, and she decided 
to stay at home and read to him, for Aunt Pen had quite set her heart 
on having this little glimpse at Italian society; and though she hung 
away her seal-skin sacque when Uncle began to groan, we knew that 
it must be a heavy disappointment for her. She put on her most 
elaborate bonnet with great alacrity when Victoria assured her that 
she would be glad to be allowed to remain at home. And I believe she 
was really glad, though I cannot understand how one can prefer a 
lonely evening to a gay party. It turned out, too, that she and Nat had 
guessed correctlv. Our new friend is a Vassar srirl, and her name is 
Calliope Carter. She belongs to a set that graduated several years 
ago ; our class call them Antediluvians. She was delighted to hear of 
Victoria Delavan, and asked after Maud Van Vechten, Delight Holmes, 
Barbara Atchison, Cecilia Boylston, and loads of others, of whom I 
have only a dim idea that they are buried, or married, or famous, or 
have fulfilled their earthly lot in some other way. I was much more 
interested in watching the panorama of Mrs. Richlands' guests than in 
hearing about these ancient worthies. Nearly all the company were 
strangers in Venice. Two oldish young English ladies, with their 
father, an East India officer, were introduced to me, and proved to be 
very frigid and uninteresting. There was an Austrian general all 



68 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



ablaze with stars and crosses, who wore terrific whiskers and was ridicu- 
lously proud of his broken English ; a young French artist also, 

who was very melan- 



choly and probably very 
poor ; several Americans 
besides ourselves ; and a 
German countess who 
was a sight to behold. 
Count Torlonia escorted 
us, and was decidedly the 
most distinguished-appear- 
ing person present. The 
only other Italian of whose 
nationality I was sure 
from his looks was a mu- 
sician with a waxed mus- 
tache, who whisked his 
coat-skirts just as Gough 
used to do, and played 
what I should have called 
a capriccio, but what Mrs. 
Richlands announced as 
a toccata. Count Torlonia 
asked me if I remembered 
Robert Browning's " A 
Toccata of Galuppi's, " 

and I was ashamed to say that I did not He quoted from it at length, 

and since then I have looked it up. 

. " What they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings, 
Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings, — 
Ay, because the sea 's the street there ; and 't is arched by — what you call 
Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival." 




A TOCCATA AT MRS. RICHLANDS'. 




A VENETIAN GARDEN. 



A SOCIETY WOMAN. 7 I 

This led to our discussing the " Merchant of Venice," and wondering 
that there was so little really Venetian in the background of the play. 
The Count has promised to take us to see the Rialto, and Nat is going- 
down the lagoon to see an argosy. 

Mrs. Richlands lives in a beautiful suite of rooms on the Grand 
Canal, furnished in palatial style with bric-a-brac which she has picked 
up during a ten years' residence at the different capitals of Europe. 
At one end of the long apartment there is a fresco copied from a 
painting by Paul Veronese representing a Venetian garden in the 
sixteenth century. The perspective was so skilfully managed that you 
seemed to look away down a long vista of garden walk to a triumphal 
arch in the background. In the middle distance a servant was setting 
a table beneath a vine-canopied pavilion upheld by stone caryatides, 
while in the foreground richly dressed ladies were stepping down the 
marble stairs into a gondola. I was looking at this picture while 
the gentleman from Milan played the toccata; and the ladies in 
the laced bodices and powdered hair looked so youthful and gay 
that I could almost hear them saying, " Yes, we lived thus once at 
Venice." 

On a beautiful Renaissance cabinet of ebony, with ivory inlay, 
Mrs. Richlands had displayed some old Venetian glass, — tall goblets 
with twisted stems, some of them iridescent and others jewelled or 
covered with a lace-like filigree, and all looking too fragile to touch, 
though they were very old. Count Torlonia, seeing me interested, 
said that he had a Millenori glass said to have once been the property 
of Lucrezia Borgia, and from which she habitually drank ; as it was 
so composed that, if it were filled with a liquid containing the cele- 
brated Borgia poison, it would instantly fly in pieces. 

Take it all in all, I had a charming evening at Mrs. Richlands', 
but I paid for it this morning with a racking headache. Nat says it 
was the supper, and if we had put the salad into Lucrezia Borgia's 
glass it would have shivered into a thousand atoms. I feel better 



72 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



after my long morning nap. Every one has gone away to see the 
Ducal Palace and the Bridge of Sighs. I am rather glad to have es- 
caped visiting the prison ; but I would have liked to go with them to 
the Palace of the Doges at the other end of the bridge, and have seen 




YS///y//s/////y/s/////////s/s///////s//^^^ 




VENETIAN GLASS. 



the Giants' Staircase, with its statues of Mars and Neptune, and the 
portraits of the seventy-six doges in the Library, with the blank place 
for the traitor Marino Falieri ; but sight-seeing requires the strength 
of a Hercules. I think I am quite right in deciding to be nothing 
but a society woman, for I have n't the health to accomplish anything 
grand. 




FOUR O CLOCK TEA. 



A SOCIETY WOMAN. 75 

I wish Nat were here to read to me. I wanted to finish the " Life 
of Titian " before leaving Venice ; but my eyes will not let me read. 
I am a little lonely. 

Ah ! here comes Victoria with a glass of lemonade. " You 
dear girl, I thought you had gone, with the rest, or perhaps that 
you were disgusted with me on account of my superficial views of 
life." 

And then Victoria sat down beside me and talked with me so 
lovingly and sisterly that my heart was drawn to her more than ever. 
I want to write down what she said while it is fresh in my mind, that 
I may have it to refer to by and by. She has formed too high an esti- 
mate of me ; but no matter. I shall be the better for this glimpse into 
what might be. 

" My dear Phcebe," she said, " I am not surprised that you aspire to 
be a leader in society. In some respects you are well fitted to become 
one ; and when I think of what is in the power of a woman ruling over 
such an empire, a career of this kind seems to me one of the noblest 
that can be chosen." 

I opened my eyes wide. " Victoria Delavan ! Do you mean to 
say that to give dinner parties and afternoon teas is nobler than to 
paint pictures or to write stories ? " 

" It may be, for life itself is higher than the arts of life. The 
painter or the writer only depicts an ideal existence. The society 
woman lives her life, if any one can be said to live, and she touches the 
lives of a thousand different persons. Take one such afternoon tea, for 
instance, which you will give one of these days, and at which there may 
be thirty or forty guests. How much tact and experience, diplomatic 
skill and kindness of heart, has gone to the making up of that little 
company! There is a shy genius coaxed from his den by your sunny 
powers of persuasion. He never goes anywhere — he cannot bear 
society twaddle ; but Miss Todd is so charming, and has such a knack 
of bringing together interesting people, that it is a privilege to attend 



j6 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

one of her delightful gatherings ; one is refreshed and inspired by- 
exquisite music, intellectual and witty conversation. It is something 
to have touched the hand of this eminent man, to have studied the face 
of this noble woman. And the eminent man is rested, amused ; the 
wealthy woman finds some one to patronize ; the unknown musician 
is introduced ; the rising poet is applauded, and helped to wider appre- 
ciation ; the dramatic genius is recognized, and finds his foot planted 
a little more firmly on the ladder of fame ; and the profound thinker, 
who knows he is not a society man, brings his garnered thought, 
and the minds of all present are touched by an electric spark, elevating 
or stimulating ; while the student himself, from being a mere book- 
worm, is won to the study of the great book of human nature. Then, 
too, in a lull in the sparkling conversation a singer may let fall such a 
pearl of a song that eyelids will be moistened and hearts touched as 
though he sang from the choir of a great cathedral. Young girls will 
confess that an entertainment of this kind is really more interesting 
than a german, and will envy your remarkable conversational powers. 
The younger men see that to shine in such society requires an abil- 
ity to converse on other than the merest commonplaces of the day. 
Friendless people make congenial acquaintances ; philanthropists have 
a hearing ; the stranger is welcomed ; the foreigner carries back to 
the Old World a higher opinion of America. There is not a person 
present who has not been helped or who has not aided another. The 
evening has been a sermon on charity and good-will ; and yet no 
one goes away with the consciousness that he has been preached at. 
Such a hostess is a queen indeed, and the opportunities which she 
may improve for doing good are incalculable." 

I had listened to all this with a kindling enthusiasm, delighted to 
find that my ambition was really a worthy one ; but suddenly an over- 
whelming sense of the genius and the labor necessary to the making 
of such a hostess came over me. " I do not believe there ever was just 
such a manager," I said. " She would need the mind of a Napoleon to 



A SOCIETY WOMAN. J J 

arrange her campaigns, and that other general, whoever he was, who 
knew the name of every soldier in his army." 

" Yes," Victoria admitted, " a special aptitude is required, but the 
world has known many such women. The salons of Madame de Stael 
and Madame Recamier were notable instances." And she named other 
leaders in our own country who have this remarkable faculty. 

" And what makes you think I have it ? " I asked. 

" Nat told me of the club you organized among the young people 
of your home ; how it started out with the idea of acting, — an amateur 
theatrical company, — but broadened into a lyceum ; and of your mis- 
sion Sunday-school work, and the fair for the day nursery. All these 
things required management of people, and you seem to have known 
how to make all work together harmoniously." It seemed, too, that 
I had betrayed myself in my talks about Vassar ; for I was popular with 
the girls, though not with the teachers, and was always on committees, 
and a prime mover and head conspirator in the way of frolics. I 
began to feel quite happy to find that Victoria appreciated me ; but 
I confided to her that my vacations were really more trying for my 
health than the regular college work. 

" I can well believe it," Victoria replied ; " there is no career which 
demands such a strong physique as that of a society woman. Perfect 
health is one of her absolute requirements, and the most necessary 
one. 

" Then I might as well give up at the outset." 

" No. Let your ambition be a spur to your endeavor after it. It 
is within your power if you try earnestly, but you must not begin your 
career until you are positive that you have obtained this prime essen- 
tial. As a minister's wife with a large parish on your hands, or a Mrs. 
Senator Someone, with all your husband's constituents to look after, 
you would break down utterly without a good constitution to depend 
upon ; and the creation of a salon requires far more physical labor 
than one would naturally imagine." 



78 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

" All right, Victoria, dottore mia. Do your best for me, and I 
promise to do the best I can for myself. I '11 abandon society for the 
present, if you say so, and shut myself up in a health-cure, — anything 
to become thoroughly well." 

Victoria kissed me, and thought we would be able to carry on a 
little health-cure of our own ; and as we heard Nat's voice outside, 
suggested that we should have a game of battledore and shuttlecock 
in the corridor. I sprang up from the sofa feeling really quite lively, 
for her sermon had been an invigorating one, and Nat and I began 
a hotly contested match. Then we went in to dinner, and I ate so 
much polenta that Aunt Pen was scandalized. 

" Shall I not be able to go out at all in Rome ? " I asked Victoria. 

" Certainly," she replied ; " I hope we shall be able to go out 
every day." 

" But I mean in the evening, — to parties and dinners ?" 

" Not often ; but there are very charming afternoon reunions in 
Rome which you can attend. I know a Mrs. Clarke, an American who 
has lived abroad a long time, whom you might well study, for she is 
an acknowledged leader in Roman society." 

" If she will only take us up, I will fathom all the recesses of her 
soul until I find the secret of her success." 

" She is worth your study, and I shall be curious to see whether 
our estimates agree ; and meantime she is sure to make your stay in 
Rome delightful." 

Then the others came noisily in, chatting of all they had seen. 
Nat, in especial, was jubilant over his visit to the Arsenal, and pouring 
forth a steady stream of, " You ought to have gone," and, " You don't 
know what you have lost, — the remains of the old junk ' Bucephalus ' — 
no, I mean ' Bucentaur,' and flags from the battle of Lepanto, and 
Attila's helmet, and a stone lion from Marathon; and — and — " 

Victoria and I could talk no more for that time ; but we clasped 
hands under the afghan, and understood one another perfectly on all 



A SOCIETY WOMAN. jg 

points but one. She said something about the necessity of a minister's 
wife being in some sense a society woman. I don't quite understand 
her there ; and if Victoria thinks that I would under any conditions, no 
matter how famous he might be, or how much I might care for him, 
marry a minister — why, Victoria doesn't understand me! 



CHAPTER VI. 

EN ROUTE FOR ROME. 
Padua. — Ferrara. — Bologna. — Pisa. 

Count Torlonia has arranged a pilgrimage among the churches 
for us. which we are to set out upon this afternoon. We will visit 
the Frari for Titian's sake ; and that of the Saints Giovanni and Paolo 
because the funerals of the doges take place here and their tombs are 
in the choir ; and the Jesuits for its fine marbles ; and the Salute to 
see the great pictures by Titian and Tintoretto in the sacristy ; and 
possibly several more, if enthusiasm and strength hold out. 

Victoria had a curious experience this morning. She went out 
alone, and as she was stepping into her gondola, another approached. 
She was sure that the gondolier was making for our steps; but the 
gentleman within leaned out and gave him some direction, whereupon 
the boat shot quickly off into another canal. The strange part of it 
is, that as the gentleman leaned out, Victoria recognized him as an 
American whom she met in Brazil when she was travelling with the 
Holmeses. She says that he was a very prepossessing man, and that 
he pretended to be a Brazilian Senhor, but that it was afterwards 
ascertained that he was a defaulting cashier from the United States. 
Victoria thinks that he recognized her before she saw him, and this is 
why he ordered his gondolier to row him in another direction. It is 
quite exciting. I wonder why he was coming to our palazzo. 

Calliope Carter has been here all the morning; she returns to 
Rome this week, and we are half inclined to go with her. 

Nat has been poring over books giving statistics of the commerce 
of Venice during the Middle Ages, and says he understands how 



EN ROUTE FOR ROME. 83 

Shakspeare intended to represent a capitalist who should correspond 
to one of our railroad financiers, in Antonio, the Merchant of Venice. 
The ships were the railroads of Venice. At the close of the fifteenth 
century she owned three hundred ships, manned by eight thousand 
sailors, with three thousand smaller craft, not to mention the navy of 
forty-five galleys with their eleven thousand men. Venice must have 
been very gay at the time of the Crusades, with her merchants and 
artists, her knights and nobles, and foreigners from all countries 
swarming in her canals. 

A letter has just arrived from Count Torlonia. He has been called 
away very suddenly, and will not be able to make the pilgrimage of 
the churches with us, but he hopes to see us in Rome. With the 
letter came an old morocco-covered case containing a goblet of antique 
twisted glass. It is Lucrezia Borgia's cup, which he has given to me. 
It is much too valuable a present for me to accept, but he has given 
us no address, and I cannot return it until we see him again. Nat 
does not believe in its genuineness, and was for trying it with all the 
poisons at the little chemists on the next corner ; but I have reminded 
him that it only professes to detect the Borgia recipe. 

It is strange, but really a part of Venice seems gone, now that 
Count Torlonia has left. No one has any enthusiasm to carry out the 
church-pilgrimage scheme, and we have decided to proceed on our 
journey with Calliope. We are to wander along slowly, stopping at 
the interesting places en route, and first at 

PADUA. 

I am writing in the cars; for we only stopped over one train at 
Padua, lunched at a disagreeable hotel, and were taken by Calliope 
to see some bronzes by Donatello. 

Calliope says that this artist was intensely truth-seeking ; that 
he labored most of all to give an appearance of life to his work. 



84 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

He would often talk to his statues while modelling, and stepping 
back, cry impetuously, " Speak, speak ! " I shall look for Donatello 
again when we reach Florence. Michael Angelo said of his " Saint 
Mark," in that city, that " one could not fail to believe the gospel 
preached by such an honest-looking man." We saw some very sweet 
and childlike angels of his in the Santo, standing on tiptoe and piping 
their very hearts into their bursting cheeks. I wish I might have them 
reproduced in small on a music cabinet. 

There was one of Giotto's frescos in one of the churches, which I 
must not forget to mention, chiefly because Nat quite upset the dignity 
of our entire company by insisting that the angels were mosquitoes. 

We are approaching Ferrara, where we will spend the night and 
as much of to-morrow as we shall be tempted to give it. 

i 

FERRARA. 

This queer old city has proved so interesting that we have lin- 
gered here three days. 

In the first place, there is a palace where Lucrezia Borgia gave 
her poison feast to the young gentlemen of Venice who had once 
offended her by having her thrust from a ball-room. Then there is 
the Cathedral, and Tasso's prison, and the Library with the precious 
manuscripts, — Ariosto's " Orlando Furioso" and Tasso's " Jerusalem 
Delivered." We have stopped at the Golden Star Hotel, which is 
not far from these places of interest. 

Best of all, the Castle d'Este is here. Its square towers have a 
charm for me of which I am sure one could never tire, and the lapping 
water in the moat tells of bloody feuds and crimes. It is one of the 
most picturesque castles I have ever seen; and when one considers 
the life histories that have been acted here, I know of none more 
interesting. The panther woman Lucrezia paced through these halls, 
which needed, indeed, after that contamination, to be cleansed by the 




■w«*£lwtf i' '\V(li\ * 



..-.^af»'« 



UHmitj 



EN ROUTE FOR ROME. 87 

presence of some good woman like that of Renate, or Renee, a princess 
of France and wife of Hercules d'Este. She was a Protestant, and 
secretly harbored Calvin in one of the towers of this very castle. The 
castle chapel is still shown where he preached to a few invited guests 
under the very nose of Pope Julius II.; for Ferrara is one of the papal 
cities. Mr. Ho wells quotes from an Italian guide-book which speaks 
of Renee as follows : — 

" This lady was learned in belles lettres and in the schismatic doctrines with 
which Calvin and Luther agitated the people. Calvin himself, under the name 
of Huppeville, visited her in Ferrara in 1536, and ended by corrupting her mind 
and seducing her into his own errors, which produced discord between her and 
her religious husband, and resulted in his placing her in temporary seclusion in 
order to attempt her conversion." 

The castle extended such free hospitality and entertained, through 
its different owners, so many celebrated guests, that it was said, — 

" Whoe'er in Italy is known to fame, 
This lordly house as frequent guest can claim." 

One other lady of the family of d'Este, Leonora, the patroness of 
Tasso, lives still in history. We have all seen pictures of the poet 
reading to her and to her maids of honor, who, I think, must have 
yawned at times, — politely, of course, and behind their fans, — unless 
the readings were very short indeed, and interspersed with much 
mandolin playing and dancing. I shall try, when I am a social leader, 
to find more interesting poets to give readings at my evenings. 

One thing which pleased us all very much I must not forget to 
mention. At the foot of one of the old feudal towers we found a white 
marble tablet in honor of Garibaldi. 



BOLOGNA. 

We have just left Bologna, having given it but a few hours, when 
it deserved as many days. Modena, too, lay off to the right. I would 



88 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

have liked to visit it for the sake of Ginevra, who, it is asserted, 
never lived there or anywhere else, except in the poet's imagination ; 
and yet she is so much a real personage to us, that we never see one 
of the long carved chests so common in Italy, without wondering 
whether it might not have been the one which coffined her young 
life in. 

The most interesting things to me in Bologna were two statues, 
kneeling angels, which serve as candelabra, one of which was sculp- 
tured by Michael Angelo before he was widely famous. Italy is full of 
beautiful statues. I made that rather trite remark the other day, and 
Nat replied, — 

" Yes ; it makes me think of ' Wilhelm Meister: ' — 

'Die Marmorbilder steht und seht mir an.' 

You know the poem, of course ? " 

" No," I replied; "I have not studied German." 
" Well, then, I must translate it for you : — 

' The marble statues stand and stare ; 
They freeze my blood, they lift my hair ; 
They clasp their hands, and beg and weep, 
Come buy your tombstone, we 're so cheap ! ' " 

Nat is such a rascal ! Without joking, however, I do intend to 
buy a kind of tombstone. I asked Uncle Jonah if he would be will- 
ing to have one made for me in Italy when I died, and he said, 
" Certainly, dear child ! " — " And how high would you be willing to 
pay?" He supposed that the correct thing would cost a thousand or 
fifteen hundred dollars. " Then," said I, " please order it now." Uncle 
Jonah looked anxious. " You don't feel worse, do you, Phcebe ? " 
he asked kindly. 

Nat burst into a hearty laugh. "She's getting better every day; 
but she has struck an economical vein, like the old gentleman in New 




CALVIN. 



EN ROUTE FOR ROME. 9 1 

England, who bought a coffin cheap at auction, and kept it under his 
bed, using the box down cellar as a potato-bin. Phcebe thinks she 
will never have another chance to buy monuments to such advantage, 
and of course it will keep. But where do you mean to set it? Have 
something in the ornamental line, and it will serve as a fountain in 
the front yard." 

" Nat," I said, " I am in earnest. I do not think I am oroin? to die 
at present. I am going to do all I can to get well ; and as I think that 
is a very joyful event, I want to celebrate it by erecting a statue to 
Health. When I die, I don't want any monument at all." 

Uncle Jonah considered a moment. " I believe you are right," he 
said. " Only prove to me that you are soundly well, and that I shall 
not have to be asked to contribute right away to another monument, 
and you may have your tombstone now." 

I gave Uncle Jonah a frantic hug, and turning to Calliope, ex- 
claimed, " Do you hear that ? You have my commission to model a 
statue of Health, for fifteen hundred dollars, if that is enough." 

Calliope smiled. " That is a very good price," she said. " But how 
do you know that I can do anything; and where is the statue to be 
placed ? " 

" I know you can, to the first question ; and to the second — I want 
it placed in the new gymnasium which they are going to build at 
Vassar.'" 

" Not too fast," Victoria suggested ; " you have not yet fulfilled 
your uncle's conditions." 

" I only accept conditionally," Calliope replied. " I will model my 
idea of Hygeia in clay, and you shall then feel perfectly free to order 
it or not, as you choose." 

So we have left the matter; but I know I shall be satisfied. I like 
Calliope, but she is queer as queer can be. In the first place, she 
avoids people, especially rich and fashionable persons, whom, one 
would think, it would be to her interest to cultivate. She has an 



92 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



absurd idea that a girl with a career has no time to waste on society ; 
and I know that she looks down upon me, not in a scornful but in a 
pitying way, as a girl of low ambitions. I unintentionally overheard a 
scrap of conversation between her and Victoria. Calliope's remark 

ended with, " a pity she has 
not a higher ideal." And Victo- 
ria replied, " We do not long 
for the best at first ; and Phoebe 
will be either led on from this 
low ambition to a higher, or she 
will ennoble the end itself by en- 
dowing it with such new dignity 
that it will be worth striving for." 
Nat was not pleased with our 
visit at Bologna. He ordered 
sausage for lunch, and he says 
it was not genuine Bologna. 
He cannot believe that he has 



been deceived all his life, and 
that what he has known as Bo- 
logna sausage is a fraud ; and 
therefore he insists that the city 
we have just left is not Bologna, but some unprincipled hamlet 
masquerading under that celebrated name. 

Some Italians from Ravenna had the same compartment with 
us, and had brought an enormous lunch-basket from which they 
constantly refreshed themselves with fried cakes and bananas. 

Nat says he is glad to have met these Ravennese, for now he 
understands the derivation of the word ravenous. The sight of so 
much food made me almost ill, and we changed our compartment. 
We have now as travelling companions a far more agreeable Floren- 
tine family, with a sweet little girl restless as a sprite, with whom Nat 




A RAVENNESE. 



EN ROUTE FOR ROME. 



is scraping acquaintance by making a puppet-show with knots tied in 
his handkerchief. 

We have had a shocking accident. The train was stopping at 
some village, and little Beatrice was looking out with her hand upon 




THE ACCIDENT. 



the door, when the guard came along and banged it to, shutting three 
of the child's fingers into the crevice. I think we all shrieked, with 
the exception of the little girl ; she turned perfectly white, but was so 
still you might have thought the shock had killed her. It seemed an 
age before we could get that door opened, and then the child fainted. 
They stopped the train ; but we were miles from any town, and the 
father cried in agony, " Is there no physician on board ? " " I am almost 
one," Victoria replied modestly, and immediately set about doing 
just the right thing. The fingers were lacerated as well as crushed, 



94 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



and some of the bones were broken. I buried my face in my wraps, 
but Nat acted as hospital steward, helping Victoria, and shredding 
the knotted handkerchief for bandages. 

Victoria said that the only aid which she could then render was 
temporary, as there must be an operation when they reached home, 
which was fortunately quite near. The family were overwhelmingly 
grateful, and begged her so earnestly to go with them and continue 
the care of the child until they could secure the services of their own 
physician, that I gave up my own claim upon her and joined my 
entreaties to theirs. We had not intended to stop at Florence on our 
way to Rome, for we are in haste to reach the winter-quarters already 
engaged for us, and are reserving the beautiful city on the Arno until 
warm weather shall drive us from Rome. Uncle Jonah did not see 
fit to change his plans even now. " Miss Delavan can join us as soon 
as the little girl no longer requires her attention," he said. And so, 
disguising as much as possible our dislike at parting from her, though 
only for a few days, we left her, like the good Samaritan she is, with 
these new friends who needed her so much, and hastened on to 

PISA. 

We have just left the city of the Leaning Tower, and are speeding 
along the coast toward Civita Vecchia and Rome. We were only in 
Pisa long enough to see the Cathedral, the Baptistery, and the Cam- 
panile. I have always thought that the inclination of the Tower must 
be exaggerated, and was almost startled when I saw it apparently top- 
pling to its fall. Aunt and I could not be persuaded to ascend it ; but 
Uncle and Nat mounted its eight stories, and brought back accounts 
of a wide-stretching view, — Leghorn plainly visible, and Corsica a blue 
line in the distance. There is a chime of bells in the top, of sweet, full 
tone. The largest bell is named Pasquareccia. It is only tolled when 
criminals are led out to execution. The Tower is over seven hundred 



EN ROUTE FOR ROME. 



95 



years old, and no one knows when it began to settle. The most beau- 
tiful thing in the Cathedral, to my thinking, was a pulpit resting on 
seven pillars, each alternate one having for its base a crouchino- lion. 

In the Baptistery we saw the swinging bronze lamp which first suo-. 
gested to Galileo, then 
only eighteen years old, 
the use of the pendulum 
as an exact measurer of 
time. Some of his ex- 
periments with falling 
bodies were performed 
from the top of the 
Leaning Tower. What 
stupendous facts were de- 
veloped later by this great 
astronomer, all hingeing 
on the simple swinging 
of this censer lamp ! He 
was summoned before the 
Inquisition to answer for 
his heretical assertion of 
the motion of the earth, 
and was weak enough to 
recant it ; though tradition states that he followed the abjuration with 
the whisper, E pur si muove, — " Nevertheless, it does move." 

One realizes these historic words even in snail-paced Italy. The 
Inquisition has passed away, and Galileo's heresy is triumphant even 
here. Father Secchi, the astronomer monk, in his convent observa- 
tory, used Galileo's inventions and theories. Everywhere, in science, 
politics, religion, " the old order changes, giving place to new." The 
world does move. 




LEANING TOWER. 



CHAPTER VII. 

OLD ROME. 

General View. — The Forum and the Capitol. 

" Over the dumb Campagna sea, 

Out in the offing, through mist and rain, 
Saint Peter's church heaves silently, 
Like a mighty ship in pain." 

As we approached Rome and could see, through gaps in the ruined 
aqueduct almost before the city itself was visible, the dome of St. 
Peter's rising on the horizon, these lines came to my mind. All Italy, 
to me, is stamped with the thought of the Brownings. How wonder- 
ful it must be to think or say anything which through all time will 




THE CAMPAGNA. 



be connected with a certain place, and such a place as Rome, where 
so many minds have thought and eloquent tongues have spoken? 
that it would seem there was not an idea left to be voiced. 

We have taken rooms in a queer flatiron-shaped building, with our 
parlor in the point, and a window which looks down two streets. I 
have not been out yet ; but Nat has already found the principal streets 







lillifl 



OLD ROME. 



99 



and squares. I turn to the map 1 and he gives me a general survey of 
the city. It is divided by the Tiber into two unequal parts. That 
on the left is Rome proper ; Trastevere is on 
the right. The business quarter of the city 
is situated in the lower part, on the site of 
the old Campus Martius. The principal 
street here is the Corso, one mile in length, 
from the Piazza del Popolo to the foot of 
the Capitol Hill, and is lined with handsome 
palaces. The Piazza del Popolo is a public 
square with an Egyptian obelisk in the cen- 
tre, and from it extend diagonally the Via 
Ripetta and the Via del Babuino, which opens 
into the Piazza di Spagna, — the strangers' 
quarter, — near which we have taken lodgings. 
Nat wandered down to the river-bank at 
the foot of the Capitol and the Palatine, and 
found the Ghetto, or Jews' quarter, and on 
through its labyrinthine alleys to the -Aven- 
tine, Palatine, and Caelian Hills, covered with 
vineyards, convents, and ruins. He says the 
Pincian and Quirinal Hills are the abode of 
the upper class in more senses than one, for 
the inhabitants of the palaces and villas that 
crown their summits breathe purer air and 
enjoy a more widely extended view, and their 
grounds are terraced and laid out in grand 
old gardens. Between these two hills he 
found the Barberini Palace, and on the 
Quirinal is the Pontifical Palace, fronting the Square of Castor and 
Pollux. On the left bank are St. Peter's, the Vatican, and the Castle 
1 See map of Rome, inside cover. 




THE AMERICAN IN ROME. 



IOO 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



of St. Angelo. Nat has amused us by an account of the people whom 
he has seen in his wanderings. He was not so much interested in the 
natives as in other sight-seers, whom he calls " strangers in Rome, 

Jews and proselytes." He described one 
American whose peculiar cast of counte- 
nance and shaven upper lip seemed to 
proclaim him a Massachusetts farmer, but 
who wore a sombrero that would have be- 
come a Texas ranch-man, who gazed at 
the statues and shook his head, muttering, 
" Shades of Anthony Comstock ! " He saw 
the old English officer from India, whom 
we met in Venice, wandering about, snarling 
and grumbling at everything, while his 
startled daughter looked as if she would 
have been glad to admire but dared not. 

I am disappointed in Uncle Jonah ; he 
has an idea that women are not thorough, 
and says that he hates to have business 
dealings with them, for they always enlist 
his sympathies, and sympathy will bankrupt 
any business. 

Uncle Jonah is vestryman of the Church 

of St. , at home, and he had a rather 

disagreeable experience with the soprano, who was the real leader of 
the choir, and selected all the music to suit her own voice. " Really," 
he said to Aunt Pen, " I can't get along with her at all ; we must 
have a man in that position." Even Aunt Pen could not help 
laughing at that; and she has not ceased asking Uncle Jonah if he 
has yet found his gentleman soprano. 

It is too bad that I have failed in showing him that a girl can teach 
Latin. Nat sees my grief, and is truly repentant. He told Uncle 




THE ENGLISH OFFICER AND 
HIS DAUGHTER. 




ROMAN FORUM. 



OLD ROME. IO3 

that it was all his fault ; I was a good teacher, but he was a poor 
learner. 

" Oh, yes ! " sniffed Uncle Jonah ; " any one can keep school if the 
pesky children are kept away. I want to find some one who will teach 
you in spite of yourself." 

He called at Calliope's studio this morning, and says he is on the 
track of some one, — a young theological student just back from a tour 
through the Holy Land, who is staying awhile in Rome. Calliope 
thinks he. will be willing to take Nat in charge for a time. His name 
is Hathaway. Nat says he will not have his way with him, and con- 
fides to me his resolution not to learn a particle, to show his father 
that it was n't my fault. This is very consoling to me ; but I must 
counsel Nat to be a good boy, though I know I shall be jealous of the 
new tutor's success. 

He has come. I knew I should not like him, so his commonplace 
appearance is no disappointment. But I am weary of the view from 
the window, and to-morrow we are to accept his guidance through the 
ruins, beginning with old Rome, coming down, in the course of cen- 
turies, if we live long enough, to more interesting modern art. 

Evening. We have made a beginning, and have just returned 
from a visit to the Roman Forum, where so many noted ruins cluster, 
and from the Capitol, where the photograph was taken which I now 
insert. On the left are eight Ionic columns belonging to the Temple 
of Saturn ; between these we can see indistinctly the white Phocian 
Column. In the distance is the great pile of the Coliseum, just in 
front of which rises the campanile of Santa Francesca. To the 
extreme right are three Corinthian columns, — all that is left of the 
Temple of Castor and Pollux. Mr. Hathaway talked in a really in- 
teresting strain of these old temples, and we loitered along a pleasant 
road, shaded by trees, to where the Arch of Titus gave us another 
vista. Here his enthusiasm quite overflowed in his attempt to make 
us realize what this part of Rome must have been when this arch was 



io4 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



erected. He has returned fresh from a study of Jerusalem and the 
Temple, sacked by the Roman legions, and it is all as real to him as 
though it occurred yesterday. I could not share his enthusiasm, but 
I could see that it was not the least bit affected. As we stood there 
he read from Mrs. Hawthorne : — 

" Through this [arch] I perceive, coming on, the triumph of Titus, after his 
conquest of Jerusalem, and behold, glittering in the sun, the sacred seven- 
branched candlestick of massive gold, borne by the procession, and the silver 
trumpets of Judah, and the golden table from the Temple of temples, the Temple 
of Jerusalem. And here is the Emperor in his car, with four proudly stepping 
horses, surrounded by the bearers of the fasces, and crowned by Victory/' 

The Forum is a valley between the Capitol and the Palatine. We 
passed the Arch of Septimius Severus as we descended from the 
Capitol. It is quite modern for this part of Rome, for it was erected 
a. d. 203, to commemorate victories over the Arabians and Parthians, 
who are represented on its bas-reliefs. 

To-night we visit the Coliseum, and this afternoon I shall read all 
I can, in preparation, from the " Students' Gibbon " and other histories. 
I have also been looking over photographs of pictures by Piloty, Alma 
Tadema, Kaulbach, Wagner, and others. 

I know now the position of the Seven Hills, — the Pincian, Quirinal, 
Viminal, Esquiline, Palatine, Caslian, and Aventine. They follow 
very nearly the curve of the Tiber, and across its tawny water we 
see the Vatican Hill and Janiculum, which we all remembered from 
Macaulay's grand poemj " Horatius," — 

"For since Janiculum is lost, 
What hope to save the town? " 

Nat had occasion to quote from it more than once ; it is as true to 
the topography as a guide-book, and yet thrilling all through with 
vivid human interest. The Museum of the Capitol stands where the 
citadel was situated which the Gauls attempted to surprise one night 




GEESE OF THE CAPITOL. 



OLD ROME. IO7 

away back in the early history of Rome, nearly five hundred years 
before the Christian era ; but the geese gave the alarm and saved the 
city. Nat was greatly interested in that incident; he said he should 
never say, " as silly as a goose," again. We saw a consequential old 
gander stalking about the hill, and Nat very politely gave him a mili- 
tary salute ; for he said that it was possible that his two thousand times 
great grandfather might. have been one of the faithful sentries. The 
principal buildings on the Capitol now are three palaces forming the 
three sides of a square, in the centre of which is a fine bronze statue 
of Marcus Aurelius. It was formerly gilt, and some traces of gold 
are still to be seen upon it. 

One of these buildings, the Capitoline Museum, we entered, to 
study its fine collection of the statuary of antiquity ; and whom should 
we find here but Count Torlonia? I thought at first that he was not 
really glad to see us. He kept looking about in a furtive way as 
though he expected some one else to join us, but we were all there. 
Nat noticed his manner, and said, " You are looking for Miss Delavan? 
We left her in Florence." 

It seemed to me that he looked relieved ; but he only said, " I have 
not had the pleasure of meeting Miss Delavan. Is she a relative of 
yours ? " 

Now I think of it, he did not happen to see her when we were in 
Venice, and I suppose I must have imagined his queer behavior, for 
I cannot think of any reason for it. At all events, he was pleasant 
enough afterward, and chatted about the statues in a very entertaining 
way. He invited us to make an excursion to his villa somewhere on 
the way to Naples, where he says he has made some astonishing discov- 
eries, and is having excavations carried on in behalf of the " Societe pour 
le Vol des Monumens Anciens." Uncle Jonah was very much interested 
in his account of a Hygeia which had been recently unearthed. 

"It would be just the thing, Phcebe," he said, "for the Vassar 
Gymnasium." 



io8 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



" But, Uncle," I protested, " I have ordered a statue from Calliope ; it 
would not be fair to her to change." 

" You did not exactly order it, you know," Aunt Pen urged, " and 
I should think a real antique would be much more classical, and 
suitable to a college." 

" If it is a real antique," Nat suggested, " it will be sure not to 
have any nose or arms." 

" The statues here are many of them very ancient," the Count 
replied, " and most of them are in a good state of preservation ; " and 




WOUNDED GAUL. 



then the conversation passed to the wonderful marbles and bronzes 
by which we were surrounded. We paid our respects first to the 
" Marble Faun," which Hawthorne has made familiar to Americans, with 
his smiling face and pointed ears ; and here too we found the " Dying 
Gladiator," which Mr. Hathaway says is falsely so called, and is really a 



OLD ROME. 



I I I 



dying Gaul. He steadies himself with one hand on the ground, but 
his strength is lapsing with his life-blood, and he sinks heavily down- 
ward. Mr. Hathaway pointed out the collar which proclaims the 
man a Gaul of Julius Caesar's time, 
and then spoke so entertainingly 
of Caesar's campaigns that Nat was 
stirred with emulation to re-read the 
unappreciated Gallic Wars. It was 
in the old Capitol that Caesar was 
murdered, and we saw the famous 
statue of Pompey, at whose feet the 
great ruler expired. In this build- 
ing we found also the Venus of the 
Capitol, and the Antinous, the most 
perfect representation of youthful 
manhood which has come down 
to us from antiquity. We were 
especially interested in the collec- 
tion of portrait busts of the real men 
of ancient Rome who walked once 
in the Forum below. Here are the 
long line of Caesars, of whom Story 
writes in his " Roba di Roma : " 
" At Rome the Emperors become 
as familiar as the Popes. Who does 
not know the curly-headed Marcus 
Aurelius ? Are there any modern 
portraits more familiar than the se- 
vere wedge-like head of Augustus, 

or the dull phiz of Hadrian, with his hair combed down over his low 
forehead, or the vain perking face of Lucius Verus, or the brutal bull- 
head of Caracalla, or the bestial, bloated features of Vitellius ? " 




AUGUSTUS. 



112 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



Here, too, are many of the proud Roman ladies, — Livia, Antonia, 
Drusilla, Poppeea, Octavia, Statilia, Julia, Faustina, Portia, and a host 
of others, some as noble as beautiful, and others profligate and shame- 
less. Nat electrified us all by his discovery that these busts were 




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 



AGRIPPINA. 



adorned with movable marble wigs ; and Mr. Hathaway explained that 
the empresses had their busts sculptured in this way so that when the 
prevailing fashion in hair-dressing changed, another style could be 
substituted. 

A seated statue of Agrippina, wife of Germanicus and mother of 



OLD ROME. 



"3 



Caligula, particularly struck me, — a noble woman, whom we must ad- 
mire for her virtues and pity for her misfortunes. We found Virgil 
calmly sweet, a realization of the poet and lover of Nature. 




Uncle Jonah seemed plunged in profound meditation; he turned to 
Mr. Hathaway and asked, " The sculptors of antiquity were usually 
men, were they not ? " 

Mr. Hathaway replied that he had never heard of a woman among 
the ancient sculptors, but that Harriet Hosmer held a prominent 



H4 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

place among the modern ones. Uncle Jonah was not satisfied. " I 
have never liked the plan of your having your statue carved by a 
woman, Phoebe," he grumbled ; " it is sure not to be satisfactory." 

And so it was agreed that before the winter is over we are to run 
down to the Count's villa and take a look at the excavations. I shall 
put it off until Victoria comes, for otherwise I fear that they will all be 
too much for me, and I am determined not to disappoint Calliope. 

Count Torlonia wished to make an appointment for to-morrow, to 
take us to St. Peter's and to make a pilgrimage of churches in Rome, 
such as we planned in Venice but did not carry out. Uncle Jonah 
told him that we were taking things systematically, and had not yet 
finished ancient Rome ; that Mr. Hathaway had planned a programme 
for to-morrow, to include souvenirs of the early Christians. The 
Count rather turned up his nose at this, and spoke in a slighting way 
of Mr. Hathaway, saying that it was not well to place one's self too com- 
pletely in the hands of a guide. I explained that Mr. Hathaway was 
not a guide, but Nat's tutor, and a clergyman ; but evidently what I 
said made little impression, for when the Count next spoke to him 
he addressed him as " Hathaway," as though he were a servant. I 
don't care in the least for Mr. Hathaway, and I did rather like the 
Count ; but this rudeness fired my indignation, and I stood up for the 
little minister and would not hear to his plans being set aside. So 
to-morrow we are going to the Catacombs ; and as the Count could not 
prevail upon us to accompany him, he has asked leave, which we could 
not well refuse, to go with us. 

After leaving the Capitol we stood for a few moments on the edge 
of the Tarpeian Rock, over which traitors were thrown. The old 
times were full of crime and cruelty, and I am glad that the tricolor 
floats over the Rome of to-day and the fasces are buried in oblivion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 
The Coliseum. — Mamertine Prison and the Catacombs. 

We visited the great amphitheatre last night by moonlight. It was 
like a picture. The cavernous arches made black masses of shadow, 
and the moonshine lay white in the broad arena. It is certainly the 
most imposing ruin left of ancient Rome. Begun by Vespasian, 
it was finished by captive Jews under Titus. While we were walking 
yesterday in the Forum, I noticed that a pretty dark-eyed boy made quite 
a detour to go around the Arch of Titus. Mr. Hathaway explained 
that he was a Jew, and his people even to-day cannot be induced to 
pass under this monument to the downfall of their city and temple. 

We walked about the long tiers of seats which once afforded room 
for nearly ninety thousand spectators, and tried to imagine how it 
must have looked crowded with the Roman populace; the elite as well 
as the lower classes thronging the entrances of the "greatest show on 
earth," singing such songs as Bulwer has imagined : — 

" Ho ! ho ! for the merry, merry show, 
With a forest of faces in every row ! 
Lo ! the swordsmen bold as the son of Alcmena 
Sweep side by side o'er the hushed arena. 
Talk while you may ; you will hold your breath 
When they meet in the grasp of the glowing death. 
Tramp, tramp, how gayly they go ! 
Ho ! ho ! for the merry, merry show ! " 

I could imagine the combatants lifting their hands to the Emperor 
before the contest, and crying, « O Caesar, we who are about to die 



Il6 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

salute thee." I could imagine the prisoners from Gaul and Africa, the 
barbaric music, the clash of arms, and the roar of the lions. But the 
terrible play of the gladiators, and the wild chariot races, sink into in- 
significance beside the innumerable company of martyrs who were here 
given to the beasts. 

Mr. Hathaway repeated Professor Boyesen's graphic description of 
Calpurnia's search for the dead bodies of her parents after the cruel 
" sports," on such a night as this. The painting of the background was 
so true to nature that I could almost fancy the stealthy footsteps of the 
lions : — 

" Hushed and empty beneath, as if touched with a chilly remoteness, 
Lay the white square of the Forum, where loomed the Phocian Column 
High in the moon-bathed stillness. ' The sculptured arch of Severus 
Glimmered palely amidst the temples of deified Caesars ; 
While 'neath the brow of the Palatine Hill the vast Coliseum 
Flung its mantle of gloom, to hide the deeds of the darkness 
Wrought on this terrible day for the joy of a barbarous people. 
Sheltered deep in the shade of those huge and cavernous portals 
Stood, close pressed to the stone, a little quivering maiden. 
Fearless she stood, and with burning eyes through the iron-barred gateway 
Gazed at the sated beasts that yawning drowsed in the shadow, — 
Drowsed, or slunk with velveted tread o'er the starlit arena ; 
Snuffing, perchance, as they went, the mangled form of a martyr, 
Sightless, that stared with insensible orbs to the moon-flooded heavens." 

The arena was very quiet and peaceful, only one other human being 
besides our own party within its enclosure, and he a cadaverous pilgrim, 
pacing slowly from station to station (as the little booth-like chapels 
which the Roman Church has set up within the enclosure are called) 
with an open breviary before him, his thin lips moving as in prayer, 
though I doubt if he could see the words. But in spite of the peaceful 
stillness it all came upon me with terrible vividness, — the cost of being 
a Christian in those times ; the nobility of standing by one's conviction 
even unto death. 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 



119 



This morning we drove in an open barouche along the Appian 
Way to the catacombs of St. Calixtus. The view was superb and the 
air delicious, the Count was gay and sparkling ; but the Coliseum still 
cast its shadow over my spirits, and 
his wit seemed to me out of place 
and flippant. I could not help 
thinking how many mangled forms 
had been brought from the Coli- 
seum by night over this very road, 
to be buried in the underground 
cells of the Catacombs. 

We drove on as far as the great 
round tomb of Cecilia Metella, its 
fine marbles stripped away by the 
Popes to adorn their palaces. 
Byron's description of this tomb, 
though it lacks to me the interest 
of the otjier poems which I have 

quoted, yet makes the most of the A pilgrim. 

material, and deserves that a. part 
of it at least should find a place in my journal : — 




" There is a stern round tower of other days, 
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone. 



What was this tower of strength ? within its cave 
What treasure lay so locked, so hid ? — A woman's grave. 
But who was she, the lady of the dead, 
Tombed in a palace ? 

Perchance she died in youth ; it may be, bowed 
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb 
That weighed upon her gentle dust. 



120 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



Perchance she died in age, surviving all, — 
Charms, kindred, children, with the silver gray- 
On her long tresses, which might yet recall, 
It may be, still a something of the day 
When they were braided, and her proud array 
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed 
By Rome. — But whither would conjecture stray? 
Thus much we know, — Metella died, 
The wealthiest Roman's wife. Behold his love or pride ! " 

After inspecting the great tomb we turned again toward Rome, 
and the carriage paused beside a gateway. We descended a steep flight 

of steps, and found ourselves 
in the first story of the cem- 
etery of St. Calixtus, for 
these subterranean laby- 
rinths descend continually, 
and double upon themselves. 
There are sometimes three 
or four strata of the long 
galleries, lined on each side 
with tombs cut in the rock 
like berths in a steamer. 
The passages were generally 
narrow, so that we walked 
in single file, following a 
snuffy old man with a torch, 
whom Nat called the Janitor, 
as though the place were an 
apartment house. We saw 
the small earthenware lamps 
which the Christians used. 
We entered first the Crypt 
of Lucina. This Lucina is supposed to be the Christian name of 
Pomponia Grsecina, the wife of Plautus, a noble Roman lady of whom 




THE JANITOR OF THE CATACOMBS. 



: 




'•x< ;-. v - • '- '^liL 



ill 



I'Vti ■'!' I 



»#JP*%--- ■ lift! 




THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. I 23 

Tacitus wrote : " She was accused of having embraced the rites of a 
foreign superstition, and though after investigation pronounced inno- 
cent, she lived to a great age in continued sadness." 

Next we visited the Papal Crypt, where all the early bishops of the 
Church were buried, and traced the graffiti, or scribblings on the wall, 
of which Northcote makes mention in his " Roma Sotteranea." 

These notes by the wayside were made by visitors at the beginning 
of the Christian era.. Some were only names; but one individual had 
come in search of the tomb of a certain Sofronia, and at the very en- 
trance he had written: Sofronia, vivas cum tuis, — "Sofronia, mayest 
thou live with thine own." 

All along the passages this was repeated, a prayer for the soul of 
the departed ; but as he walked, the faith of the pilgrim grew stronger, 
and on the very tomb he scratched the triumphant realization: 
Sofronia dulcis, semper vives Deo, — " Dear Sofronia, thou wilt ever live 
in God." 

This joyful confidence of the Christians has been contrasted with 
the gloom of pagan epitaphs. One, to a boy, is mentioned by North- 
cote, which states that " neither wit nor amiability, nor loving, winning 
ways had been of avail, but he had become the foul prey of the brutal 
Pluto." 

The pagan epitaphs could only compliment the departed by enu- 
merating his graces and accomplishments ; while the earlier Christian 
inscriptions are characterized by a stern simplicity, and only later 
appeared such endearing adjectives as " dulcissimus, innocens, and 
felix." One little boy is spoken of as agnellus Dei, — " the little lamb 
of God." The word " martyr," inscribed after the name, was considered a 
crown of glory beyond all eulogy. The tombs, or cells, were hollowed 
in tiers, one above another, usually three or four and sometimes as many 
as eight, between the floor and ceiling. At intervals the passages 
widened into chapels and rooms. It was here that the hunted Chris- 
tians met for worship; these chambers were often decorated with 



124 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



attempts at carving and rude frescos. In the Catacomb of St. Agnes 
there are pictures from Bible stories, — Jonah sleeping beneath his 
bower of gourds, and other scenes from the Old Testament ; but the 
favorite design, often repeated, was that of Christ as a shepherd. Mr. 
Hathaway quoted from a poem about the goats and sheep, — how the 
early Church wished to show Christ's love for all alike: — 

* 

" And in the Catacombs, 

On those walls subterranean, where she hid 
Her head mid ignominy, death, and tombs, 
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew, 
And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid." 

We noticed the firm belief in the resurrection implied by the 
inscriptions : the bodies are " deposited," not buried. Sometimes a 
coin was pressed into the mortar which sealed the tomb, as a means of 
recognition, and occasionally this was the only marking of the spot. 
There were places where the coin had dropped away or had been 
stolen, leaving its impression in the mortar. 

I happened to mention that such a coin would have for me all the 
sacredness of a relic ; when the Count remarked that he hoped some 

day to show us his collection of ancient 
coins and engraved gems. He wore 
one silver coin set as a ring, repre- 
senting what he said he had always 
considered a Hercules strangling a 
lion, but if I chose to fancy it a Chris- 
tian contending in the arena I might 
do so, and he would be honored by 
its acceptance. I declined, I fear rather abruptly, and then tried to 
explain that a ring seemed to me a tiny manacle only to be worn in 
token of a sacred pledge. We were alone just then, and the Count 
asked quite seriously, " Then when you wear a ring you will consider 
yourself bound to the giver ? " 




HERCULES AND LION. 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 



127 



" Certainly," I replied with decision ; and turning an angle we found 
ourselves with the others in the Crypt of St. Cecilia. It seemed to me 
that the Count looked confident and half amused, as though we had 
laid a wager and he was sure of winning ; but I shall not forget this, 
and cannot imagine myself accepting or wearing a ring presented by 




THE PYRAMID OF CF.STIUS. 



him, I told him that I wished he would allow me to return the 
Borgia glass ; that it made me unhappy to have anything so uncanny 
in my possession. But he argued very adroitly, that instead of being 
allied with deeds of evil, its mission was to detect them, and made 
so light of the gift that it seemed absurd in me to urge him to take it. 
I wonder why it is that I do not quite like the man, he is so pleasant 
and plausible. Uncle Jonah trusts him, and he won Aunt Pen's 
heart by carrying her pug all through the Catacombs. She was so 



128 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

frightened lest it should be lost, and he humored her so courteously 
and kindly. He is very different from Mr. Hathaway, who is as blunt 
and honest as can be ; but when I imagine both men back in the early 
days at the Coliseum, some way it seems to me that the Count's 
place would be beside some lady of fashion, close to the emperor's box, 
and his tomb at last some costly monument like the pyramid of Cestius, 
which we saw the other day when visiting the Protestant burying- 
ground where Keats and Shelley are buried. And Mr. Hathaway, — 
ah ! he would be standing in the centre of the arena with folded arms, 
waiting the lions. 

Of all the poets, I think Robert Browning has expressed best the 
spirit of the Catacombs in one of its epitaphs which he has thrown into 
his grand verse : — 



&* 



" I was born sickly, poor, and mean, 
A slave ; no misery could screen 
The holders of die pearl of price 
From Csesar's envy ; therefore twice 
I fought with beasts, and three times saw 
My children suffer by his law. 
At last my own release was earned ; 
I was some time in being burned. 
But at the close a Hand came through 
The fire above my head, and drew 
My soul to Christ, whom now I see. 
Sergius, a brother, writes for me 
This testimony on the wall. 
For me, I have forgot it all." 

r 

We drove back to Rome, still on the Appian Way, past the little 
church of Domine quo Vadis. The legend is a pretty one, — how Peter, 
fleeing from Rome to escape the persecution of Nero, met the Lord 
Jesus at this spot, and asked in awe-struck surprise, " Lord, whither 
goest thou? " "To Rome," replied the vision, "to suffer again, since 
my followers flee from martyrdom," Of course tradition states that, 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 



129 



stung by the rebuke, Peter turned about and joyfully confessed Christ 
by his death. The authorities say that there is no proof that Peter 
was ever in Rome ; but the Catholic Church believes it, and Paul 
was here, at all events. We visited this afternoon the Mamertine 




APPIAN WAY. 



Prison, where, it is said, they were both confined, and where hundreds 
of other Christians awaited their death-sentence. It is a terrible dun- 
geon, in two stories. Prisoners were let down into it by ropes. In 
the lower cell they were strangled ; and we saw here a walled-up door- 
way communicating with a secret way by which the executioners came. 



130 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



In the upper cell is an altar, with roughly carved busts of Peter and 
Paul. I never saw a more gloomy prison ; and yet it was possibly here 
that Paul wrote the Second Epistle to Timothy, — that loving farewell 
to his dear friend. I have read it through to-night, every line illu- 




Til 



THE MAMERTINE PRISON. 



mined with new light. Did the jailer allow him a torch and writing 
material, or was it dictated to the faithful Luke, and by him written 
from memory ? How his great heart yearned for his friend, — " Do thy 
diligence to come shortly unto me " ! And how glorious is the dec- 
laration which he makes in the face of death : " For I am now ready 
to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought 




THE MADONNA. 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. I 33 

a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : 
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which 
the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not 
to me only, but unto ail them also that love his appearing." 

Could a society woman say that ? 

I begin to realize what Victoria meant when she said, " Either she 
will be led on from a low ambition to a higher, or she will ennoble 
the end itself." 

I am sure that God made me for society. I love it, and people 
say I am a born leader. If that is true, there comes in a responsibility 
which I have never faced, — I must lead right. Some people are called 
to work in the slums, among the outcasts, the ignorant, and the poor. 
I wonder if my field may not be to work for Christ among the idle 
daughters, — girls who have education and position, and find time 
hanging heavy on their hands ? My brain is buzzing with new ideas. 
I must leave thinking at once and sleep ; but when Victoria comes, I 
will talk it over with her. 



CHAPTER IX. 

A LETTER FROM FLORENCE. 
Nat has just brought me a letter from Victoria: — 

Casa Bella, November 18. 

Dear little Phcebe, — I know you are anxious to hear from me and from 
my small patient. And Beatrice really deserves that name, for a more gentle and 
patient little creature I never met. I will not tell you all the details, how several 
operations have been necessary to remove the splintered bones ; suffice it that 
she is a little heroine, and that she is so far on the road to recovery that I shall 
join you ere long. How does the statue of Hygeia progress ? I know you 
must enjoy Calliope's studio, it is such a fascinating nook. I think with immense 
satisfaction of the friendship which must be growing between you two girls. 
You will do good, and get good from each other. Calliope is too intense ; she 
needs you to brighten and swe'eten her life. [Note by Phoebe. — There, this 
covers me with shame and confusion. I shall go to see Calliope at once. To 
think that I have been a fortnight in Rome without going near her ! It is a 
burning shame ! ] 

She has had some bitter disappointments. Some day, when you have won 
her confidence, you must get her to tell you about the gas-fixture man who 
engaged her to make a bronze candelabrum which was a great success, but who 
cunningly managed the business part so that she gained neither reputation nor 
money from it. The life of every artist is full of struggle. As I have been 
walking the streets of Florence, I have tried to think myself back to the year 
1504, and to imagine the coming of Raphael, a young and unknown man, from 
the country town of Urbino to this great art centre. Leonardo da Vinci then 
was in the prime of his success, and Michael Angelo, lonely and gloomy, was 
battling with adverse fate. Here was lying Vasari, with no prophetic vision to 
foretell the fulsome praise which he would one day lavish on the world-accepted 



A LETTER FROM FLORENCE. I 37 

Raphael ; crafty, two-faced Machiavelli ; Fra Bartolommeo, the inspired artist 
monk ; Cardinal Bibbiena, the jovial man of the world ; and Bembo, a 

" Rose-i'-the-hat-rim Canon, cross at neck, 
And silk mask in the pocket of the gown." 

I wonder what they all thought of the country youth and his new pictures. 
I can imagine one of his Madonnas or some other of his early pictures on private 
exhibition, and the Florentine connoisseurs and art critics filing by it with re- 
marks not unlike those we hear nowadays ; for art cant is as old as church cant. 
The first looker-on, who had not as yet heard the others give their opinion, 
might doubtfully mutter, "Not bad ! " and crooking his hand into a funnel, eye 
the picture from a distance, waiting for some one else to break the ice. Then 
another, more courageous, obeying his natural instincts, might exclaim over the 
grace of composition and the exquisite sentiment of the picture, until some 
autocrat of the day poured cold water upon his enthusiasm by declaring the 
style " antiquated, servile imitation and affected sentimentality." 

Next Machiavelli might cry, " When shall we have a national Art ? Michael 
Angelo paints only athletes, and Perugino tells us his swollen muscles resemble 
a sack filled with walnuts ; Da Vinci paints in twenty different styles ; and here 
is this new adventurer desiring to introduce another manner." 

Then an architect might admire the background, and announce himself a 
lover of the new science of perspective ; and a poet would desire that a picture 
should be only vaguely suggestive of something mysterious and mystical. And 
so the procession troops by ; one lamenting the lack of strength and realism, 
another wishing that it had been more decoratively treated, a third sighing for a 
modernly local stamp, and the rest praising and dispraising every several detail. 
I can imagine how Raphael closed his ears to the critics, both malicious and 
flattering, and worked out manfully his mission to cheer the heart and elevate 
the mind. 

Michael Angelo seems to me, on the contrary, to have been affected by the 
gabble of tongues. Proud and sensitive, the iron entered into his soul ; and 
though he fought bravely and overcame, something of the effort as well as the 
force of the wrestler is visible in all his works. I have no doubt that by this 
time you have been to see his " Moses." Tell me if the grand figure does not 
impress you as one who has conquered by force of will. 

This is hardly telling you about Florence, but I remember that you were 
always fonder of people than of pictures. Just now the art world here is ex- 
cited about some frauds perpetrated in one of the galleries. It seems that a 



138 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

picture by one of the old masters has been removed and a copy substituted. 
Detectives are now on the watch in London and Paris for the sale of the 
original picture. Every one wonders how the change could have been made, but 
the rogue will infallibly be discovered. The copy was recognized by the artist 
who executed it. I had a little conversation with him, and he told me that he 
had been painting on the copy a long time, and that he noticed a distinguished- 
looking stranger who frequently loitered through the galleries, seemed to take 
an interest in his work, and often paused behind him and watched his progress. 
When the painting was finished the stranger purchased it, paying with a check 
signed by Torlonia, the Roman banker. Of course the signature turned out to 
be a forgery, and shortly after the original picture disappeared and the copy 
was found in its place. It is a little extraordinary that the change was not im- 
mediately detected, for the canvas on which the picture was painted was slightly 
smaller than the original, it being a rule that no copies can be made of exactly 
the same size of any painting. The new canvas was artfully made to fit into 
the frame by the addition of a gold mat, and for several days it remained 
unnoticed. 

The most alarming feature of it all to me is, that from the artist's descrip- 
tion of the man who bought his picture, I believe him to be the Mr. Bartlett of 
whom I caught a glimpse in Venice, and who deceived us all so cleverly in 
Brazil under the name of Senhor Silva y Palacios. To think that this consum- 
mate rogue is wandering about Italy, perpetrating frauds upon confiding people, 
is enough to make one turn entirely from modern society and devote one's 
attention to the past. 

Florence is full of the ghosts of the people who have lived here, some of 
them as rascally as our modern villains, and others who seem to us at this 
distance heroes and even saints. 

The Medici take up the most room after the artists ; from Lorenzo the 
Magnificent, who lifted his family to kingly power, and Giovanni, whom we 
know better as Pope Leo X., patron of arts and letters, to the fair and wicked 
women of that family who became queens of France, — Catherine, wife of Henry 
II., the unnatural mother, and Marie, queen of Henry IV. 

After all, I am mistaken ; the earnest monk who stirred the hearts of all 
Florence with his fiery utterances, and refused Lorenzo absolution upon his 
death-bed unless he would give back liberty to the city, was grander than all 
the Medicis. It was under a damask rose-tree in the gardens of St. Mark that 
Savonarola began his preaching, where the Medicis had at great expense col- 
lected marvels of ancient art for the instruction of artists. Many of the artists 




LEO X. 



A LETTER FROM FLORENCE. 



141 



came to hear him, and were so moved by his eloquence that Fra Bartolommeo 
and others burned their pictures and gave themselves to the Church. For a 
time he swept all Florence with him. But the reaction came, and Savonarola 
was burned in the public square in 1498 ; and every March, when the anniversary 
comes round, the populace strew violets on the pavement. I have been re- 




SAVONAROLA. 



reading "Romola" and seeking out the localities which George Eliot mentions. 
I wandered about the Duomo, the grand cathedral which takes its name from 
its magnificent dome, the largest in the world. 

Michael Angelo, when called to Rome to build St. Peter's, looked back upon 
it lovingly, and exclaimed, " Like it I will not, better I cannot." It is lighted by 
beautiful stained-glass windows, and without, standing isolated from the build- 
ing, is the lovely Campanile. 

" And of all I saw and of all I praised, 
The most to praise and the best to see 
Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised." 



142 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



Slender and straight it is, — a lily of architecture. They say that Giotto de- 
signed to have a flame-shaped spire on the summit ; then, surely, it would have 
reminded one of a candle with aspiring, climbing flame. As it is, it is a glori- 
ous candlestick, such as John in his vision might have seen set to represent 
the churches. I paused long before the Ghiberti gates, the doors of the Bap- 
tistery, which Michael Angelo said were worthy to be the gates of Paradise ; 
and we came home over one of the bridges which span the Arno, and saw other 
bridges with their arches reflected in the glimmering water. It was fairy-land. 
Afterward I took a little walk in the Loggia and bought a bit of Florentine 
mosaic, — only a trifle, a little pin with design of jasmine blossoms, but it will 
always recall to me the city of flowers, and my pleasant stay with this kind- 
hearted Florentine family. A very unexpected circumstance has happened to 
me here. I desired that some surgeon should examine Beatrice's hand, to assure 
the family that it had been properly treated. They had spoken often of a Signor 
Steele — something, an Englishman in whom they had great confidence, but the 

name did not strike me as familiar ; and you 
may judge of my surprise when, after the 
examination, I was introduced to the Doctor 
Stillman whose skill and devotion saved . 
the life of Professor Holmes on our South 
American journey. He was as much as- 
tonished as I, for he had never heard of my 
studying medicine, and had declared that 
the child's accident had been skilfully 
treated. He is an earnest, unassuming 
man, whom I thoroughly like ; and now 
that we have the same profession, we have 
a common interest. He is watching the 
war-cloud which appears to be settling over 
Europe, and thinks of offering his services 
as surgeon to the English cause, and of 
hurrying away to Afghanistan. I wish he 
could meet you and possibly he may ; for 
he talked inconsistently of Rome, as though 
it were on the way to the seat of war. 

Yesterday we drove over the hills in the suburbs. The villas glistened pale 
yellow and white among the green foliage, and the city lay below us a great 
flower garden, — the Duomo the rose, and the Campanile the lily, of the par- 




FRA GIUSEPPI. 




CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 



A LETTER FROM FLORENCE. 



145 



terre. We drove to the Protestant cemetery just outside the Porta Pinta. 
One might say of it as Keats did of the one at Rome where he and Shelley 
lie buried, — that it would make one in love with death, to be buried in so 
sweet a place. Nowhere else I have seen such beautiful box hedges. We 







" FRA GIUSEPPI HAS LOST HIS NOSE." 



found Mrs. Browning's grave, a sarcophagus of white marble, the only inscrip- 
tion, " E.B.B. Ob. 1 861," and on the reverse, a lyre and a medallion. Theodore 
Parker is also buried here. 

But I shall see you so soon that it is not necessary for me to tell you of the 
wonders of art at the Uffizi and Pitti palaces (the latter looks, from without, 
like a penitentiary) ; of the "Venus de' Medici," Raphael's " Fornarina," and the 
" Madonna della Seggiola ;" of the Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce,and the Convent 
of St. Mark, with the frescos of Fra Angelico ; of Michael Angelo's statue of 
" David " and Donatello's sculptures. 



1 46 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

I have not said half enough of little Beatrice. She is a bright child with odd 
fancies, who likes to talk with grown people. One of her particular friends is a 
clerical gentleman, who visits often at the house, and whom we all call Fra 
Giuseppi. Her French governess was taking her to walk one day, 1 think in 
the Boboli Gardens, when Beatrice saw a statue which seemed to her to re- 
semble Fra Giuseppi, with his little skull-cap and waving locks. But the statue 
had lost its nose, and Beatrice spied this slight defect at once. "Send for 
Dottore Vittoria," she cried, "quick, quick, to mend Fra Giuseppi's nose." 

Were it not that the dear child still requires treatment, even beautiful 
Florence could not detain me, for I have an unaccountable feeling that you need 
me. You have not been ill or imprudent, I hope. Write a line to tell me that 
you are quite well, for if I were at all superstitious I should fancy that evil were 
lurking near you. On a spire which I can see from my window there is an 
iron weathercock shaped like a grotesque demon, and he points steadily toward 
Rome. Is the north wind giving me the megrims ? From the Prince of the 
Power of the Air may all sweet influences fend you ! 

Lovingly always, 

Victoria. 




THE BAPTISTERY, DUOMO, AND CAMPANILE. 



CHAPTER X. 

"PLEASURES AND PALACES." 
Calliope's Studio. — St. Peter's and the Vatican. 

Victoria's letter pricked my conscience, and I determined to call on 
Calliope at once. But I could not go to-day, for I had made an engage- 
ment with Count Torlonia to make the pilgrimage of the churches. 
We did not see the churches, after all, for the Count thought that the 
various palaces would be much more cheerful. Nat was busy over his 
lessons with Mr. Hathaway, so we formed just a carriage-full, — Aunt 
and the Count, Uncle Jonah and I. We drove first to the Barberini 
Palace. We passed a beautiful spiral stone staircase, and entered the 
picture-gallery, — a series of salons in which are many noted paint- 
ings. Guido's "Beatrice Cenci" I recognized at once, from the many 
copies that exist in America ; but no copy can give the pathos of that 
face. There were other famous pictures by Raphael and Domenichino ; 
but the sad eyes of Beatrice fascinated me, and I came back to her 
again and again. 

We next paid a flying visit to the Rospigliosi Palace expressly for 
a peep at Guido's " Aurora." The painting is on the ceiling, but one 
does not have to tire one's neck by staring up at it, for a mirror is 
arranged upon a table, where one can see it reflected, and study every 
detail with perfect ease. "The Hours" were very beautiful, — some 
gay and hopeful, Hours yet to come, all radiant with the promise of 
the future ; but one looks back with sad regret, as though thinking of 
" the tender grace of a day that is dead." 



i5o 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



From the Rospigliosi we drove through the Piazza del Popolo to 
the Pincian Hill. It is the fashionable drive, and we passed and were 
passed by many gay equipages with liveried footmen and elegantly 
dressed women with soft Italian eyes. At the foot of the Pincian is a 
large square in the centre of which is an obelisk which the old Israelites 
looked upon in Egypt. Passing under Michael Angelo's gateway, we 

entered the Borghese grounds, 
lovely with artificial waterfalls 
fountains, and picturesque ruins 
so artfully constructed that one 
can hardly believe them manu- 
factured for effect. Old sar- 
cophagi, emptied for centuries 
of the dust they once held, 
served as ornaments. Beautiful 
trees and foliage plants of luxu- 
riant growth, aloes and cacti 
and orange-trees, close-clipt 
lawns, and terraces set with 
statues, gladdened our city-tired 
eyes. One of those pure blue 
skies for which Italy is so praised 
relieved the yellow buildings, 
and the dark green of the old 
ilex-trees, the huge stone-pines 
and cypresses. Count Torlonia said that we should see a military 
review here, with all the brilliant panorama of gay uniforms, and the 
excitement of dashing manoeuvres, and the fine music of an Italian 
band. But I could nbt imagine the scene lovelier than it was ; nor did 
I regret when the Count ascertained that his friend the Prince Bor- 
ghese was not at the villa. We visited afterward the Palazzo Borghese, 
and went through the picture-gallery, — twelve rooms. But it is hard to 




IN THE BORGHESE GARDENS. 



"PLEASURES AND PALACES:' I 53 

study pictures when friends are chatting, and when one's perceptions 
are already sated, and I recall distinctly but two pictures. One is 
Raphael's " Entombment," which impressed me strongly ; as much, I 
think, by the awe-inspiring majesty of Death in contrast with the gay and 
beautiful life all about us, as from the genius displayed in the painting. 
The other picture gave me a sudden surprise. I could hardly believe 
at first that it was not a portrait of Count Torlonia, so strongly did it 
resemble him ; there was the same aristocratic carriage of the head, the 
keen black eyes, and handsome mouth. To be sure, the costume was 
not of to-day, but he might have chosen this picturesque mediaeval dress 
for its pictorial effect. But Count Torlonia declared that he had never 
sat for his portrait, and did not appear pleased that we should all have 
been struck with the resemblance. We turned to our catalogues and 
found that it was a portrait of Caesar Borgia. I studied the painting 
again, and the pleasurable feeling which I at first experienced faded 
away, for I could see that the eyes were secret and evil. Mrs. Haw- 
thorne says that they reminded her of the eyes of a sullen vulture, — 
" vicious and designing, and above all, cold and indifferent." Strange to 
say, as I compared them I saw the same look in the eyes of the Count. 
He was looking at the portrait with a set scowl; but it lasted only a 
moment and he burst into light laughter, avowed himself complimented, 
and only wished that he were really as handsome. 

Aunt Pen protested against seeing any more picture-galleries, and 
we drove to a pleasant restaurant on the Corso, and dined to the 
accompaniment of pleasant music. Then we were quite ready for 
home ; but the Count insisted on taking us along the Ripetta, and past 
St. Peter's Church to the Vatican Palace. 

A glorious sunset was flinging its splendors across the sky, and we 
were glad to stroll in the Pope's beautiful garden, with no thought of 
lifting our tired minds up to the point of appreciating masterpieces. 
The high hedges which divide the grounds into fanciful labyrinths 
were capital places for a recluse to pace with his breviary, — a still 



154 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



kinder solitude for two, the Count said. During the sixteenth cen- 
tury, in the days of old Leo X., the gardens resounded with music 
and the laughter of fair women. It is a charming spot ; and the only 
puzzle was to tell which was the more delicious, this or the Villa 
Pamflli Doria, which we saw a little later, its stately facade lighted by 
a full-orbed Italian moon, Another name for the villa is Belrespiro. 
We rode about the avenues, passing from mysterious shade into sheets 
of silver light, and startling the pheasants in the shrubbery. We 
admired the beautiful view of St. Peter's and the Campagna. As we 
left the grounds a spray of ivy was caught by a wheel of, the carriage 
and thrown into my lap, and I have kept it as a souvenir. 

CALLIOPE'S STUDIO. 

An excursion is planned for to-morrow; and so after our late 
breakfast this morning, though Aunt Pen tried to persuade me that I 
ought to stay at home to-day and rest, I determined not to let another 
day go by without finding Calliope Carter. She has called upon me, 
but it was when we were all out ; and I could never face Victoria and 
tell her that I have not looked her up. Nat had already found her 
studio, and thinking that I might have some difficulty, as it is in the 
old portion of the city, he insisted on being my guide. Mr. Hatha- 
way, too, took his hat and accompanied us. Calliope's studio is in 
the queerest old caravansary I ever saw. Just behind the Capitol, 
and fronting toward the Tiber, not far from the fish-market, stands 
the ancient theatre of Marcellus, begun by Julius Caesar, finished by 
Augustus, and named for his nephew. It was built of Titanesque 
blocks of stone somewhat in the style of the Coliseum, the lower story 
ornamented with Doric columns, the second with Ionic, and the upper 
with Corinthian. The building has fallen sadly from its ancient 
grandeur ; the great archways are filled in with inferior masonry, three 
stories are crowded in the space originally occupied by one, and the 



"PLEASURES AND PALACES." 



157 



lower floor is an arcade of grimy little shops. Venders of charcoal, 
of wine, vegetables, and second-hand merchandise, have established 




^ I.jM*^ 4 * 



REMAINS OF THE THEATRE OF MARCELLUS. 



their depots here, and the entire neighborhood was malodorous in the 
extreme. Nat pointed out one of the archways, which proved to be a 
tunnel burrowing its way into the interior of the building ; and Mr. 
Hathaway said he would wait in a shop where there were some old 



158 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

swinging church-lamps which interested him, until I had made my 
call. The interior of the theatre was very ruinous, but it contained a 
court where some stone-cutters were at work upon blocks of marble. 
Nat thought that one of them might be the piece from which the 
Hygeia was to be chiselled. We mounted a narrow staircase to 
the topmost story, till my breath forsook me and I clung panting to 
Nat. On the upper landing we found ourselves opposite a little door on 
whose green paint was scratched, — whittled, Nat said, — " C. Carter." 
Nat rang, and Calliope herself admitted us. She had on a great apron, 
and her fingers were coated with moist clay; but she embraced me all 
the same, and I did not mind it in the least. The interior of the 
apartment was as odd as its surroundings. It was lighted by a large 
studio window opening on the court, and was half sitting-room and 
half workshop. The sitting-room part was divided off by a wooden 
partition, boasted a large piece of carpet, and contained many little 
articles suggestive of feminine comfort, — a rocking-chair, a small desk, 
a bird-cage, and some flowering plants. But the studio proper was 
rigidly simple, even bare, with its great barrel of clay, a modelling- 
table, and, high on a shelf running around the wall, a quantity of 
plaster busts covered with a satin-like film of dust. Nat, having seen 
me safely in, descended once more, and left Calliope and me to our 
confidences. " How can you bear to live here all alone in this shock- 
ing quarter of Rome ? " I asked. 

Calliope laughed. " This is a very aristocratic mansion, I assure 
you," she replied. " During the Middle Ages it was the fortress of the 
Pierleoni, the rivals of the Frangipani, who occupied the Coliseum. 
Later the Savelli palace was built upon and out of its ruins, and then 
it passed into the hands of the Orsini. In modern times it has been 
the residence of the historian Niebuhr. And then, I am not alone ; 
I have a delightful girl for a chum, a Miss Finger from Cincinnati, 
who writes for the newspapers. Then right across the entry are the 
Weinbergers, whom I met first in Munich ; the father is a scene- 



"PLEASURES AND PALACES." 



161 



painter, the son Carl a violinist in one of the orchestras here, and the 
o-irls are studying music. Carl is always ready to serve as escort if we 
need him ; but Mrs. Clarke, of whom Victoria must have told you, is 
our mountain of strength in a social way. She sends her carriage 
for us and insists on having us at her pleasant evenings, and in 




SLEEPING MODEL. 



chaperoning us wherever a chaperone is required. But of course you 
are anxious to see your statue." Just then I was startled by a sneeze, 
and I noticed an old Italian woman fast asleep in a chair. " That is 
my model, — the Mother Aurelia," Calliope explained. 



n 



l62 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY, 



" Did she pose for Hygeia ? " I asked. 

" Oh, no ! her grand-daughter, the pretty Octavia, posed for it. 
How do you like the design ? " So speaking, Calliope drew aside a 




STATUES OF HYGEIA. 



curtain and showed me the statue in clay. I confess that I was a little 
disappointed at first at the dingy color and diminutive size ; and 




PORTICO OF OCTAVIA. 



"PLEASURES AND PALACES." 1 65 

Calliope must have read my face, for she said, " You expected to see 
it in marble, did you not ? And there has been plenty of time, but I 
have been unfortunate. The men chiselled it from this design in the 
court below, and when they had done I had the statue hoisted by a 
pulley, so that it could be swung through my studio window and I 
might myself do the finishing here. You see it was too large to come 
up the staircase as you did. There was a weak point in the mech- 
anism somewhere ; for when it was in mid-air the statue fell and 
shivered on the pavement below. It was very fortunate that no 
one was killed or injured." 

" But what a loss to you ! " I exclaimed. " You must let me pay for 
the extra labor of putting it in marble a second time." 

" Indeed I cannot allow you to do so. You had not- actually 
ordered the statue, and I had it put in marble feeling that I could dis- 
pose of it elsewhere if you did not care for it ; besides, the loss is not 
so great as it might have been," Calliope replied, with a smile, " for an 
eccentric individual happened along the next day and bought a quan- 
tity of fragments of the stone-cutters, the Hygeia among other pieces. 
What he will do with the poor mutilated statue I am puzzled to 
imagine, for it resembled one of Garibaldi's veterans, or a genuine 
antique, in its armless and battered condition." 

Calliope next brought out a quantity of photographs of different 
Hygeias. The one at the St. Petersburg Museum, with the serpent 
over her shoulder, is usually considered the most lovely; but I liked 
also the representation of the goddess at the Louvre, holding the cup 
in her left hand, with the snake coiling around her right arm. After all, 
Calliope's idea of the daughter of ^sculapius seemed to me the most 
pleasing. She is seated in a graceful classic pose, the snake is such a 
subordinate feature that it is not disagreeable, and the face is very 
lovely. Calliope has promised to have the pretty model come some- 
time and take the position for Victoria and me. 

" Where are you going now ? " she asked, as I was leaving. And 
ascertaining that we were on our way to 



1 66 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



. ST. PETER'S AND THE VATICAN, 

she kindly dismissed her model and accompanied us. 

" I want to show you my favorite statue," she said — " Michael 
Angelo's ' Pieta,' and I would like also to see how you are impressed by 
the greatest and most magnificent of all churches." Before crossing 
the Tiber we wandered through the fish-market, which is held 
under the Portico of Octavia, near Calliope's quarters, and really one 
of the most picturesque nooks in Rome, contrasting as it does the 
ancient ruins with the life of the common people. I think Mr. 
Hathaway did not notice anything peculiar in Calliope ; but to me her 
quiet independence and utter disregard of conventionality is a little 
shocking, though I could not help admiring the conscious rectitude 
which was so fearless of misconstruction. 

We crossed the Tiber, and shortly after found ourselves in front 
of St. Peter's. The two great colonnades reached out their embracing' 
arms about the obelisk and the two flashing fountains. Passing through 
the vestibule, we pushed aside the heavy curtain and entered the 
twilight of the church. It did not impress me at first as immense. It 
was only after I had walked about and compared distances, and dis- 
covered how long it took me to reach an object which seemed quite 
near, that I realized the grand scale upon which it is constructed. 

The plan of the church is a Latin cross. The altar is in the centre, 
covered by a canopy which would seem high were it not precisely 
under the great dome. Outside of its colossal proportions, the glory 
of St. Peter's lies in its mosaics. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, the 
pictures over the altars, are all executed in this marvellous way. 
Calliope led us to the chapel containing the " Pieta." It is a statue^ of 
the dead Christ in the arms of his mother. I did not care particularly 
for the Christ, though it is unquestionably a dead body, the torture- 
racked limbs hanging limp and nerveless ; but the Madonna is full of 



"PLEASURES AND PALACES." 



167 



womanly dignity, and above all, of tender motherhood. She has taken 
the corpse upon her knee, as though her dear son were a little boy 




once more, and holds him close to her breast with such a loving em- 
brace that if the Catholics had never before worshipped Mary, it 



I 68 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

would not seem strange that this expression of divine mother-love 
should have won them to adoration. 

Mr. Hathaway and Nat climbed to the roof, but I was content to 
rest. I wish I might have seen an illumination of St. Peter's, when 
the great Bengal lights burn, and the torch-bearers run along the roof 
outlining its shape by lighting hundreds of lamps. 

We passed from the church to the long galleries of the Vatican, 
which give one an idea of Papal magnificence, and whose long array 
of marbles and pictures tired me wofully. Calliope pointed out the 
"St. Jerome of Domenichino," which she said was one of the ten great 
pictures of the world, and the " Madonna da Folignio," a very lovely 
Raphael ; but the picture which interested me most was his last paint- 
ing, "The Transfiguration," which stood in his studio unfinished on 
that Easter Day, 1520, when Rome passed by in sad procession, and 
looked, not at the picture, but at the dead face of their idolized painter 
lying upon his bier beneath it 

Raphael was an indefatigable worker, and his decorations in the 
Vatican prove how conscientiously he finished even to the minutest 
detail. The painter who could unroll heavenly visions on great can- 
vases seemed to take an exquisite pleasure in depicting the gambols 
of tiny field-mice and the graceful foliations of the Renaissance 
conventional ornament. 

We entered the Sistine Chapel to study Michael Angelo's frescos, 
his grand Sibyls and Prophets ; and quite unexpectedly we heard part 
of an exquisite chant, for the choir were practising. Calliope likes 
my plan of visiting the different churches, and has promised to take 
me next week. Some way I have a feeling that she is more reliable 
than our charming friend the Count, and I believe we shall really 
accomplish this long-cherished plan. 



CHAPTER XL 



AN EXCURSION TO TIVOLI AND A PILGRIMAGE OF THE CHURCHES. 



We had heard that there was to be a peasant's fair at Tivoli, and the 
Count urged our attending it, as it would afford us an opportunity of 
observing the peasantry, over whose picturesqueness he became very 
enthusiastic ; and really the day has brought us nearer to the life of 
the common people of modern Italy than all our 
other sight-seeing. I do not think the Count 
cares greatly for close contact with the peasantry, 
but prefers to appreciate their pictorial aspects 
from a distance. All along the road we overtook 
and passed straggling groups of queer people 
trooping to the fair. 

A blind organ-grinder leaned against a post 
by the wayside and ground patriotic airs, sadly 
out of tune, from a small box, and asked alms in 
the name of the Madonna. Women trudged 
along in their holiday costume, adorned with im- 
mense silver ear-rings and many chains. Some 
carried on their heads jars of honey or great bags 
of chestnuts to sell or exchange for trinkets ; all ""' 
had a gay, expectant air, in contrast with the weary dulness of the 
Campagna road over which they were passing. The plain seemed 
only more desolate for the ruins of aqueducts and baths with which 




172 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



it was dotted here and there. Tivoli is about twenty miles from Rome. 
It is a very old town, — four hundred years older than Rome, Mr. 
Hathaway said, and the residence of Zenobia, of Horace, and of Cas- 
sius and .Brutus. But if Tivoli were as young as one of our Western 
American cities, it would still have attractions enough in the beauty 

of its situation. Its modern villas 
and ancient ruins clino- to the cliffs 
of Monte Ripoli, while the Sabine 
Mountains form a natural amphi- 
theatre around it. The River Anio 
dashes through it, and falling over a 
precipice forms the celebrated cas- 
cade. As far as the eye can make 
out architectural forms, one can 



recognize the small round temple of 
Vesta, the Sibyl, or Hercules (for 
authorities give it different names), 
perched above the falls on the very 
edge of a sheer descent. A railing 
has been placed at its foot, and later 
in the day we examined it closely, 
and picked up some party-colored 
marbles, fragments of an old mosaic, 
as souvenirs. 

I learn from Bayard Taylor's 
Travels that the Cascatelles (or cas- 
cades) are formed by that part of the Anio which is used in the iron- 
works made out of the ruins of Mecaenas's villa; and not far distant are 
the remains of the villa of Horace. 

The fair was a Babel. Booths were erected in the market-place ; 
and ham, legs of bacon, cheese, toys, religious ornaments, scarfs, 
cakes, and gay umbrellas tempted the natives. Graceful flasks of 




BLIND ORGAN-GRINDER. 




TIVOLI. 



AN EXCURSION TO TIVOLI. I 75 

white and red wine were offered for sixteen cents. Strolling moun- 
tebanks amused the crowd, while in a shady grove the young people 
were dancing the Tarantella, and the more aged thronged the church, 
which was decorated with fresh paper flowers and an illumination of 
candles, recalling still another of Browning's poems : — 

" Not a post nor a pillar but 's dizened 

With red and blue papers ; 
All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar 's 

Ablaze with long tapers. 
And there will the flaxen-wigged Image 

Be carried in pomp 
Through the plain, while in gallant procession 

The priests mean to stomp. 
And all round the glad church lie old bottles 

With gunpowder stopped, 
Which will be, when the Image re-enters, 

Religiously popped." 

We picnicked in the beautiful grounds of Villa d' Este, and then 
returned to Rome by way of Frascati, passing by other lovely villa- 
crowned slopes, and dark-eyed Italian girls handsome enough to have 
served as models to Raphael. 

As the sun sank we could see the hills lighted up with fire- 
works and great bonfires. Aunt Pen was afraid of the malaria of the 
Campagna, and urged the coachman to drive faster. I fastened my 
cloak more tightly at the throat, and she noticed that my hands were 
bare. " Put on your gloves, child," she exclaimed ; and I was obliged 
to confess that I had lost them, as I thought, at the Villa d' Este. 
But the Count drew them from his pocket, saying that he had found 
them, and had taken the liberty to take charge of them until I should 
claim my property. I put them on at once, and as I did so felt some- 
thing cold slip over one of my fingers. A ring had been placed inside, 
and quite unwittingly I had put it on ! The Count sat opposite, re- 
garding me with a quiet smile which recalled our conversation in the 



176 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY, 



Catacombs. I could not create a scene by giving him back the ring 
then and there, but I took off the glove as quickly as if there had been 
a spider inside it. The Count looked away and said nothing. Now 




TEMPLE OF HERCULES. 



that I am at home and alone, the ring lies beside me. It is the one 
with the coin as a signet bearing the device of a man contending with 
a lion. I shall never wear it, or accept any present, however trivial, 




TEMPLE OF VESTA. 



A PILGRIMAGE OF THE CHURCHES. 



179 



from the Count again. I have placed it inside the Borgia glass until 
I shall have an opportunity to return it. If it retains its virtue of 




THE WINE-SELLER. 



detecting the presence of evil, the glass will guard or at least warn 
me of any danger. I wonder whether this is the mysterious influence 
which Victoria dreaded. 



Heigh-ho ! I wish she were here. 



A PILGRIMAGE OF THE CHURCHES. 

I have not written of our Sundays in Rome, because we have not 
devoted them to sight-seeing. I have not even gone to any of the 
great show churches on Sunday, because I could not do so with any 



l8o THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

spark of religious feeling. We attended service usually at the Prot- 
estant Chapel, or went where there was preaching in French, which 
we understand better than Italian. 

There are so many churches in Rome ! It seems a city of churches 
and palaces, and they are scattered in every quarter, so that nowhere 
does one get beyond the sound of church-bells. Nat says that they 
divide the hours of the day and night between them, so that at no 
time, from Angelus to Vespers and from Vespers to Angelus, is there 
a moment when the clangor of bells entirely ceases. Except among 
the ruins, it is always noisy in Rome. 

" Ere opening your eyes in the city the blessed church-bells begin ; 
No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in." 

Calliope said it would be useless for us to attempt to visit more 
than four or five of the principal ones, and suggested that we should 
begin with the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. 

I asked her the meaning of the word " basilica," and she explained 
that it was the Roman court-house, which in country towns served 
also as market-place. Many of these basilicas were converted into 
Christian churches with very little change in the architecture, for 
aisles ran down the length of the building furnished with galleries, 
which were the lounging-places of the spectators. The judge's seat 
occupied a semicircular recess at the end opposite the entrance, where 
the altar now stands. St. Peter's is the principal Roman basilica. 
Santa Maria Maggiore is also a basilica, and one of the oldest churches 
in the city. It would be difficult with mere pen and paper to give an 
idea of its magnificence, — the many-colored marbles in the mosaics 
and pillars, the lavish use of gold and precious stones, the works of 
sculpture and costly canvases with which it abounds ; and an artist's 
brush would be required to give the effect which greeted us as we 
entered from the dull gray light of a cloudy day into the twinkling 
illumination of hundreds of candles. The Princess Borghese — Lady 




VILLA D' ESTE. 



A PILGRIMAGE OF THE CHURCHES. 



183 



Gwendoline Talbot, of English birth and parentage — is buried here. 
She was greatly beloved by the poor of Rome, to whom she was very 
kind, and they attended her funeral weeping bitterly. It is said that 
her gentle ghost haunts the church. Never before have I felt the 
slightest attraction to a life of rank and wealth, and it comes to me 




AT SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE. 



now, not from the palaces, but from the homes of the poor; not for 
the wider opportunity it would give me as a society leader, but for 
4:he sake of being loved as this woman was loved, for her deeds of 
charity. 

Some miserable-looking beggars were kneeling on the mosaic 
floor side by side with an elegantly clothed woman, — a lady of rank, 
as I afterward learned, — and the sight gave me a lesson seldom 
taught in our American churches. 

We left the great Church of St. John of Lateran, with its palace, 
on the site of the residence of so many popes, and the staircase up 
which Luther climbed upon his knees, for another day, and passed on . 



184 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

to St. Paul's, beyond the walls. It is one of the simplest yet most 
palatial of churches. Its highly polished marble floor reflects every 
object, and gives one the sensation of walking upon mirrors. It 
would have made a beautiful ball-room, I could not help thinking, for 
the very richness took away any feeling of reverence. Unlike most 
Roman churches, it was well lighted. Eighty marble pillars flanked 
the great hall, and over them were set circular medallions, portraits in 
mosaic of all the popes. 

Mr. Hathaway prefers the old Gothic cathedrals of the north, and 
says that in Rome Christianity still suffers from having been grafted 
on a pagan stock. The most disagreeable of all the shrines of our 
pilgrimage was the Church of the Capuchins, in spite of its fine Guido 
Reni, " St. Michael overthrowing the Devil ; " for here are the ghastly 
crypts filled with the bones of monks. The vaults of this church are 
paved with earth brought from the Holy Land, in which it is the privi- 
lege of the clerical orders to be buried ; but as the graves are limited 
in number, when once filled the oldest inhabitant has to be exhumed 
to make room for the next comer. The bones of the displaced monks 
ornament the sepulchral chambers, sorted and arranged in fantastic 
designs, spinal columns and scapulas worked up into lamps, and 
niches constructed of skulls, in which entire skeletons were arranged 
as statues, robed in the dress of their order. It was altogether the 
most frightful chamber of horrors I ever entered, and one which I 
fear will long haunt my dreams. I was glad to breathe the outer air 
once more, and to get away from the influences of the grewsome 
place. 

The churches which I enjoyed most were not the exhibition build- 
ings., where priests in "custard-colored gowns" marked with cherry- 
tart crosses made what Channing calls " a great fumigation," but the 
more obscure and out-of-the-way places which we happened upon, and 
did not find set down in the guide-book. There was one where we 
heard some nuns sing through a grating, which may have been the 



A PILGRIMAGE OF THE CHURCHES. 1 87 

same chapel where Mendelssohn loved to attend vespers, and for whose 
nuns he composed a Miserere, or some other piece of sacred music. 
Mrs. Jameson seems to share the same feeling, and says : " For myself, 
I know nothing to compare with a pilgrimage among the antique 
churches scattered over the Caelian and the Aventine Hills. They 
stand apart, each in its solitude, amid gardens and vineyards and 
heaps of nameless ruins : here a group of cypresses, there a lofty pine 
or solitary palm; the tutelary saint, perhaps some San Achilleo or 
Santa Bibiana, whom we never heard of before, columns of porphyry, 
the old frescos dropping from the walls, the everlasting colossal 
mosaics looking down so solemn, so dim, so spectral : these grow upon 
us until they may be said to hallow our daily life — when considered 
in a right spirit." 

We found one of Mrs. Jameson's favorite churches, San Clemente, 
on the road leading from the Coliseum to the Lateran. Clement was 
third bishop of Rome. St. Paul alludes to him in Philippians iv. 3, — 
" Clement also, and other my fellow-laborers whose names are written 
in the book of life." Mrs. Jameson gives the legend of St. Clement, 
explaining the anchor which is usually represented with him as his 
emblem. The church is a very interesting one, consisting of three 
stories, two of them underground, discovered at different times. It is 
considered a fine example of the ancient basilica. 

The most flagrant instance of image-worship we found at the 
Church of Santa Maria in Araceli, which we reached by a flight of one 
hundred very tiresome steps. It is built on the ruins of an old 
Roman temple, and is in charge of Franciscan monks, who make no 
small income by the exhibition of "II santo Bambino," — an ancient 
doll made of olive-wood, representing the Christ child, and wrapped 
in costly swaddling clothes. This idol — for such it really is — was 
formerly sent to visit sick people ; is supposed to have performed 
many miracles of healing, and is a popular object of adoration. It is 
shown to the public on the festival of Epiphany, and is as hideous 



1 88 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

an object in its way as an ancient Hindu deity. One wonders that 
among such beautiful creations of art the representations of the 
Virgin and Child, which are most popular, should be so ugly. 

" Noon strikes ; here sweeps the procession, our Lady borne smiling and smart, 
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart." 

Take it as a whole, my little tour of the churches has been a dis- 
heartening one. If any one is inclined toward Romanism by the elo- 
quent preaching of such a propagandist as Monsignor Capel, I advise her 
to come to Rome, and I believe that the result will be, as in the case ol 
Luther, a complete disillusion. Of the churches that were on our list 
that we did not see, are the Gesu or magnificent edifice of the Jesuits, 
San Pietro in Vincoli, and Santa Maria Sopra Minerva ; but I have 
seen enough and more than enough, and shall not try again. 

All through the day a new idea has been moving in my brain. 
The ring which I left last night in the Borgia glass means a villa at 
Rome, an opportunity such as the Princess Borghese had for doing 
good. Can I throw it aside out of mere personal whim ? Is it not a 
thing to be seriously considered? If one could only surely know 
whether it were a leading of Providence or a temptation of the Evil 
One. A strange thing has just happened. I went to my toilet-table 
to look at the ring, and found the Venetian glass in fragments. What 
does it mean? Was there a grain of the Borgia poison hidden in the 
ring, which has acted chemically upon the glass ? Or had the cup 
the power of detecting still more subtle influences, and is this a warn- 
ing of something malignant and deadly threatening me through thir 
little ring? Or, again, was it the merest chance, — a puff of air from 
the open window, a whisk of the plumy tail of Aunt Pen's Angora cat, 
Henri of Navarre? 

I'll leave the questions to Victoria. 




SAN CLEMENTE. 



CHAPTER XIL 

NAPLES. 

Victoria has come. I have told her everything, and I can see 
that she is troubled. The mere telling has settled the matter for me, 
and I wonder how I could ever have hesitated. I have sent the rins: 
back to the Count by Nat, and we are going to Calliope's studio to 
see the pretty model pose for my statue. 1 

We have returned after a delightful hour. The model was 
gracefully draped in the Greek costume, and held a very natural 
jointed toy snake. I long to see the statue on its pedestal in the new 
gymnasium. Calliope herself, in her modelling costume, was the 
personification of health and energy. 

Nat has come in, bringing a note from the Count. He has been 
called suddenly to his villa at Baiae, near Naples. As he knows that 
we are going south soon, he hopes to see us there and to show us the 
wonderful statues which have been found upon his estate. Baiae was 
a famous Roman watering-place, and there were many summer palaces 
here in the most luxurious period of the ancient times, and it is not 
to be wondered at that beautiful remains should be found upon this 
spot. Uncle Jonah is sure that I will change my mind about 
Calliope's Hygeia as soon as I have seen the Count's discoveries. 

Victoria laughingly wonders whether the Count is not a magician 
or a ghost, since he always vanishes whenever she appears. She 
pretends to doubt his existence, and that he is a little fiction which we 
have all arranged as a sort of Marjorie Daw hoax. 

1 See frontispiece. 



192 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

The Mr. Bartlett of whom she wrote me from Florence has been 
traced to Rome. It seems that he is a member of a band of forgers who 
have been creating dismay among bankers by presenting false letters of 
credit, and obtaining large sums in other fraudulent ways. 

There are rumors of cholera in the East, and Uncle thinks we had 
better hasten our visit to Naples while it is still winter. I am reluctant 
to leave Rome ; for we have been very happy here, and yet we have 
seen no society, have attended no receptions, have made no acquaint- 
ances. I could never have believed such an existence endurable ; but 
I am stronger, less nervous, weigh more, and can walk farther than 
when we came. 

My journal reads like a guide-book, with its enumeration of the places 
we have visited ; and yet we have not seen half of the remarkable objects 
in this wonderful city. 

We have been down to the Fountain Trevi for a farewell draught, for 
there is a tradition that those who drink of its waters will return again 
to Rome. In response to our good-by toast Mr. Hathaway repeated 
Channing's 

FAREWELL. 

Farewell to Rome ! farewell, ye ruins high, 
Whose shattered arches float against the sky ; 
Farewell, ye giant Baths where grandeur dwells ; 
Farewell, beneath the ground, the Martyrs' cells ; 
Thou Rome art centred in my inmost heart, 
Palace of Kings, great storehouse of fine art, 
Where Virgil sang his mellow summer hymn, 
Where Caesar made all lesser fortunes dim, 
Where Raphael with his pencil moulded men, 
Where Michael with his chisel lived again. — 
Farewell ! farewell forever to thee Rome ! 
Fade the last circles of thy mountain dome, 
Through rosy twilight's intermingling ray, — 
Farewell to thee, farewell the Southern day. 



NAPLES. 



195 



We have decided to make the journey to Naples by carriage along 
the sea-coast, on the old Appian Way. The railroad lies more to inland, 
and passes over a comparatively uninteresting country. 

We have passed over the Pontine Marshes with their history of 
death, have passed a night at Terracina and viewed the ruins, and 
have put our four-in-hand to their best paces through Itri; for Itri is 
the heart of the brigand region. Nat wanted to stop here and " scare up 
an adventure ;" but the glimpse we caught of the village of women with 
no men anywhere visible was not encouraging. Many of the women 
were beautiful, and even the hags wore gay-colored rags which made 
bright spots of blue and orange and crimson in the picture ; but where 
were the men ? Off in the mountains, possibly, with some bandit chief, 
waiting to be informed of the approach of just such travellers as we. 
We paused at Gaeta, smothered with citrons and acacias. Then a 
night at Capua and more ruins, and here we are at Naples. 

Yes, it is really Naples, its houses rising like the seats of an amphi- 
theatre around the arena of the bay. The islands of Ischia and Capri 
tip the two points of the beautiful crescent, and Mount Vesuvius, like 
an old Indian sachem, sits wrapped in his gray mantle of lava, smokino- 
his pipe in the background. All 
along the sweep of shore we can 
discern nestling villages — Poz- 
zuoli off to the right, and Baiae 
is somewhere in that direction, 
where the Count has his villa and 
statues ; and away to the left, fol- 
lowing the trend of the coast, are 
Torre del Greco at the foot of 
Vesuvius, Castellamare with its 
fishing-boats, and Sorrento in 
the distance. Naples itself, whether we drive along the Toledo — a 
street of palaces — or climb the precipitous little lanes that go wander- 




196 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



ing up and down broken stairways, is a most interesting city. I never 
tire of the street life, and have been about a good deal. I like walking 




BRONZE TRIPOD FROM POMPEII. 



best, and these before-mentioned steep streets, which have no wheel-ruts, 
and are only footpaths for people and donkeys. It is amusing to 



||||||||||||ll||ll!||lii|||||l|l|PW^ 



|l!:|!; 




NAPLES. 



199 



watch the milkmen drive their herds of goats from door to door, milk- 
ing the required amount into the pitchers which the maids hand them, 
with no opportunity of adulterating 
the milk. Victoria and I have re- 
freshed ourselves with orangeade 
mixed with mountain snow, which 
we purchased at little booths on 
the street, and we have watched 
the expressive pantomime of the 
fishermen and fish-women as they 
quarrel over their wares. A great 
deal of small business is clone 
upon the street. We noticed a 
little boy doing a thriving trade 
in cast-away cigar-stumps, which 
he displayed upon the sidewalk 
and sold to other urchins. 

We have been to the Museum 
as a matter of duty. A little of 
the laziness of this soft southern 
air creeps into one's veins and 
makes it difficult to do anything 
which requires exertion, though 
we have climbed to the Castle of 
St. Elmo, and to the Church of 
San Martino, the richest in Na- 
ples, which crown the heights. 
But that was in the first days of 
our residence. We have been 
here a week now, and are old 

Neapolitans. The Museum was a weariness of the flesh, with its 
Pompeian antiquities. If one could see only the best, without being 




VENUS OF CAPUA. 



200 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY, 

obliged to look at everything. Some of the statues were very- 
beautiful. The Venus of Capua is remarkably so, and we were struck 
by a Satyr carrying a baby Bacchus on his shoulder ; but for restful 
pleasure there is nothing like a walk in the Villa Reale, a beautiful 
garden thrown open to the public, with its tropical palms, its flowers 
and fountains tempting you ever a little farther. While loitering 
here one day we noticed a man taking photographs. " That is an 
American," I exclaimed ; " every motion proclaims the fact." But as 
we passed him we saw that he had the long hair and dark complexion 
of an Italian, and I saw that I was mistaken. He gave a little start as 
Victoria passed him, as though he recognized her, but he seemed to 
change his mind, for he thrust his head almost instantly under the 
black cloth that draped his camera. He seemed to be taking photo- 
graphs of the passers-by rather than of the scenery, — a circumstance 
which seemed to me a little odd. 

POMPEII. 

We have returned from an excursion to the city which Bulwer has 
made alive to us all. We took the cars early in the morning and 
passed through Resina, the station which one leaves for the ascent of 
Vesuvius. Victoria, Mr. Hathaway, and Nat will make this trip a 
little later ; but Aunt Pen, Uncle Jonah, and I feel too old for such a 
fatiguing jaunt. Torre del Greco was the next station, still under the 
skirts of the volcano. It seems strange that people will insist on liv- 
ing there, for whenever there is an eruption the town is in danger. 
The inhabitants have a proverb, Napoli fa i peccati e la Torre li paga, 
— " Naples sins and the Torre suffers ; " so whenever Naples is more 
than usually depraved this poor little village expects chastisement. 
At the next Torre we struck away from the sea for the buried city. 
We entered by the Street of Graves. I think that the dead Pompeians 
whose ashes were quietly resting in their urns were more to be envied 



NAPLES. 



203 



on that awful night of the first eruption than the living. How 
strano-e it was to be able to wander from street to street, the pavement 
cut with chariot-wheels and the walls marked with the business and 
political announcements of the day, — to stroll unhindered through the 




DEALER IN LOVES (FROM AN ANTIQUE FRESCO). 



apartments of the wealthy and the mysterious chambers of the temples 
of Isis and of Venus ! We walked across the fields to the arena, — a 
mere baby affair after the Coliseum, and much too small for the 
elaborate programme which Bulwer supposes to have been enacted 
here ; and yet, though Bulwer may not be archasologically correct, it 
is he who has made us realize the luxurious life that w 7 ent out in that 
great horror of darkness. It is of Nidia and Glaucus that one thinks ; 



.204 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

and we do not inquire with nearly as much interest for Sallust and 
Pansa and the Tragic Poet, whose houses were pointed out to us by the 
guide. At the latter was found a mosaic representing a dog, beneath 
which was the inscription, Cave Canem, — " Beware of the dog! " 

Some of the mosaics were beautiful, but more were simply curious, 
and made you wonder at the toil by which they were constructed. 
The frescos were graceful and fanciful, many of them exquisitely 
lovely. Venus and Cupids the favorite subjects, as though life were 
all love and beauty, and then, in awful contrast, those hollow moulds 
left by the forms of those who died on that fatal day, which have since 
been filled with plaster, and show to the minutest detail the death- 
agony of these poor creatures. We all agreed that it was the most 
impressive sermon we had ever attended. Mr. Howells, it seems to 
me, best describes Pompeii in its present state. He says : — 

"What is it comes to me at this distance of that which I saw at Pompeii? 
The narrow and curving but not crooked streets, with the blazing sun falling 
into them ; the houses, and the gay columns of white, yellow, and red ; the 
delicate pavements of mosaic ; inanimate garden spaces with pygmy statues 
suited to their littleness ; suites of fairy bed-chambers painted with exquisite 
frescos ; dining-halls with joyous scenes of hunt and banquet on their walls ; 
the ruinous sites of temples ; the lonesome tragic theatre ; the baths with their 
roofs perfect yet, and the stucco bas-reliefs all but unharmed ; around the whole 
the city wall crowned with slender poplars ; outside the gates the long avenue 
of tombs, and in the distance Vesuvius, brown and bare, with his fiery breath 
scarce visible against the cloudless heaven, — these are the things that float 
before my fancy as I turn back to look at myself walking those enchanted 
streets, and to wonder if I could ever have been so blest." 

At Pompeii we saw the same American-looking photographer. 
This time he had no tripod, but carried a small hand-bag which 
Victoria thought was a sneak-box, or concealed camera arranged for 
taking instantaneous photographs. He prowled about, regarding the 
ruins with an uninterested air as though he were looking for some 
person, and did not in the least care for the beauties of art by which 



NAPLES. 



205 



he was surrounded. Nat said he had a hungry air, and was in search 
of one of the Pompeian bakers, and looked his disappointment at not 



finding him at home. 



Uncle Jonah is impatient to go to Baias and have the matter of 
the statue decided. We found the Count's card at the hotel with some 




THE TEMPLE OF ISIS. 



exquisite flowers after our return from Pompeii, and a line urging us 
to set a day for our excursion. I dread to go, and mean to put it off 
as long as I can ; but Uncle has heard that there really are a few cases 
of cholera here, and is anxious to hurry things. However, we want to 
see Capri too, and have decided to make the southern excursion first 



CHAPTER XIII. 

' LAST EXCURSIONS. 
Sorrento. — Capri. — P,estum. — Bale. 

Mr. Hathaway suggested that we ought to stop at Portici and 
see the remains of Herculaneum ; but Uncle and Nat were sure that 
the best of everything found there had been removed to the Museum 
at Naples, and we sped away over the same road that we took yester- 
day, past the two Torres, and through Castellamare to Sorrento. We 
are stopping at the Albergo del Tasso, so named in honor of the poet, 
who was born in this place in 1544. I had brought Mrs. Stowe's 
"Agnes of Sorrento" to serve as our guide-book, and we have spent 
the afternoon in looking up the places mentioned, — the mysterious 
gorge, with the " Dovecot " hidden under the orange-trees where 
Agnes lived; the Capuchin convent, on whose flat roof Padre Fran- 
cesco paced ; and the cloisters of St. Agnes on the cliffs. Of course 
the story is only a pretty fiction, but it is delightfully true to nature. 
The view from the heights away toward the blue sea is enchanting, 
and on the other side of the headland we know that beautiful Amalfi 
nestles, and farther on is Salerno. 

And now we have returned to Naples, and in half an hour I must 
tell how we took a boat to Capri, ate delicious fish, and read from 
Hans Christian Andersen's " Improvisatore," to prepare us for the 
Blue Grotto, which we did not see until the next day, for the tide 
was not right. We consoled ourselves for our disappointment by a 



BRIDGE AT SORRENTO. 



LAST EXCURSIONS. 209 

donkey-ride up the cliffs to the ruins of the Villa of Tiberius, where 
we obtained entrancing views and endeavored to feel a befitting 
horror at the villany of the old emperor. Our guide had a fine voice, 
and sang " Dolce Napoli " patiently and good-humoredly to our re- 
peated encores. We reached the Blue Grotto the next morning by 
boat. In order to enter we were obliged to lie down or crouch very 
low, while a friendly swell of the great rollers swept us under the low 
arch. The light within is bluish and spectral, but we hardly expe- 
rienced the same transports which Hans Andersen describes so graphi- 
cally. The landlord, on our return to the inn, endeavored to keep us 
a day longer in Capri to see a Green Grotto on the other side of the 
island ; but Aunt Pen was anxious about her dogs, which had been 
left at Naples, and we returned to Sorrento. Giovanni, our guide, 
whose fine voice we had all admired, told us that he had a brother 
who was a musician in America, who was fast becoming rich. Victoria 
became greatly interested, and named over the different tenors whom 
Colonel Mapleson has brought out. " Was it Galassi or possibly 
Campanini ? " But no ; his brother was not a singer, only a musician. 
We had some difficulty in understanding the name of the instrument 
on which he had won such golden opinions, but it finally proved to 
be a hand-organ! 

At Sorrento we took a carriage and drove along the crest of the 
cliffs to Amalfi, as it seems to me the loveliest drive in all the world. 
From Amalfi we continued our drive to Salerno, where we spent the 
night, and devoted the next day to the ruins of the Temples of Nep- 
tune and Ceres at Paestum. The great Doric columns of travertine 
are wonderfully perfect and fresh-looking, and yet they are the conun- 
drum of antiquaries. No one knows when .or by whom they were 
built. 

" Time was they stood along the crowded street, 

Temples of gods ! And on their ample steps 

What various habits, various tongues beset 

The brazen gates for prayer and sacrifice." 



2IO 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



At first the place seemed very desolate, only a few goats browsing 
among the ruins ; but presently we discovered our friend the photog- 
rapher wandering about the fields. Nat calls him our ghost, for he 
seems to dog our footsteps ; and yet whenever he sees us he moves 
quietly away. This time, strange to say, Victoria has an impression 
that she has met him somewhere in America. 

From Salerno we returned by rail to Naples, a rather odd thing 
happening at the station. Mr. Hathaway's hand-bag is an ordinary 

black one, and he exchanged it 
for another, exactly similar, be- 
longing to one of our fellow- 
passengers. On opening it, the 
peaceful little clergyman was 
much surprised at being con- 
fronted by a pair of Colt's re- 
volvers. Our first impression 
was that he had unwittingly 
possessed himself of the bag- 
gage of a duelling party ; but 
as he dived farther into the 
mysterious recesses of the little 
bag he discovered a pair of 
handcuffs, which startled and 
puzzled us even more than the 
pistols had done. There was 
no clew whatever by which 
he could return the property, 
though its owner is probably 
in Naples. He ought, however, to hear soon from his own bag, for 
it contained a copy of the revised version of the New Testament 
bearing his name in full, and some letter-paper with the mark of our 
hotel. 




AN AMERICAN NEAVSPAPER. 



LAST EXCURSIONS. 213 

A package of American newspapers has just been sent up from 
the banker's, the first news we have received from home since leaving 
Rome, and Uncle is greatly excited over one item of news. 

It has been proved, by the confession of one of his accomplices, 
that the man who stole the Florentine painting is the Mr. Bartlett 
whom Victoria suspected all the time. He has committed a number 
of frauds in the line of art. One of his schemes has been to supply 
archaeological societies and museums of sculpture with false antiquities. 
It is said that he has a factory of forgeries of this kind in the neighbor- 
hood of Naples, and that detectives have been sent out to apprehend 
him. 

It is all clear to Victoria now ; she is positive that the photog- 
rapher is a Mr. Jenkins, a detective, whom she met in South America, 
where he was searching for this same Mr. Bartlett, and she hopes that 
he will be more successful this time. I wonder whether we have met 
the forger, and in what disguise. Victoria has given me a very par- 
ticular description of his appearance ; but she says he is so clever 
in disguising himself that it is doubtful whether I, or even she, would 
recognize him. 

We have had a beautiful Sabbath, and have attended the English 
service. The Protestants in Naples have united in establishing charity 
schools, in which Mr. Hathaway is much interested; he will visit them 
to-morrow, while the rest of our party make by carriage the dreaded 
excursion to Baiae. I know that Uncle will want me to take the 
Count's statue instead of Calliope's, and I dislike to oppose Uncle's 
wishes, especially as he is so kind as to purchase it for me. But this 
is my first opportunity of being a patroness, and in all future decisions 
of this kind I intend to let merit alone decide, with a possible tipping 
of the scale toward the one who needs patronage most, provided the 
merit is equal. As a society woman I shall doubtless find myself in. 
difficult situations, where it will be my business to interest and influ- 
ence people in the right direction, to rouse enthusiasm where none 



214 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

exists, and carry unpopular movements by a large majority ; but then 
Uncle Jonah is a particularly knotty specimen to begin upon. Nat is 
on my side. He is sure that the antique statue will prove to be a 
broken-nosed old monstrosity not in any way comparable with our 
exquisite Hygeia, which unfortunately Uncle has not seen. Victoria 
seems unusually impatient. " At last," she says, " I am to see this 
remarkably shy Count, who always flies at my approach." 

Evening. Our drive has been a delightful one, and the further ex- 
periences somewhat startling. 

" A glory of oleander bloom 

Borders every bend of the craggy road ; 
The lemon and spice tree with rare perfume 

The lingering cloud-fleets heavily load : 
And over the beauty and over the balm 
Rises the crown of the royal palm." 

Our route took us through the Grotto of Posilippo, a very. long 
tunnel damp with little trickling streams, but lighted by- lamps. Just 
above it, in a vegetable garden, is the tomb of Virgil, which bears out 
the comparison that Mr. Howells made to a sunken spring-house, — a 
thought which he well says would not have offended the poet, who 
loved and sang of humble country things. The walls were adorned 
with many scribblings. Nat copied this inscription in his note-book : 

" Qui cineres ? tumuli hsec vestigia conditur olim 
Ille hie qui cecinit pascua, rura, duces." 

We followed the curving beach to Pozzuoli, where St. Paul landed, 
and where there are ruins of temples. The ground here is volcanic. 
Monte Nuovo, a large hill which we saw away to our right, was ele- 
vated in thirty-six hours as recently as 1 538. Beyond it lies Lake Aver- 
nus, — the Tartarus of Virgil. It is all classic soil; and as we came in 
sight of Baiae we did not wonder that the Count had been able to make 
discoveries here, for ivy-draped walls rose on either hand, and we were 




GROTTO OF POSILIPPO. 



LAST EXCURSIONS. 



217 



told that from the cliffs ruins of temples, baths, and villas could be seen 
beneath the water. Nero had a villa here, and used to visit it attended 
by a thousand carriages and two thousand mules shod with silver, if one 
may credit the old extravagant traditions. Nat hoped that as an omen 
of good luck we might find one of the famous silver mule-shoes. 
Baiae was the fashionable watering-place, the Newport of Rome also 
during the time of Augustus and Hadrian. 

" A fair and sumptuous city then stood here, 
Lifting its marble forehead o'er the sea, 
And glittering in the sunny atmosphere 
With calm white masonry." 

Horace sang in praise of its gardens ; but having gained all this 
information, it became important to ascertain the situation of the 
Count's villa. We inquired of an intelligent native, whom we found 
lounging near the harbor, but he knew nothing of any noble family 
of the name of Torlonia. This struck us as extremely odd ; but we 
prosecuted our search with diligence, the intelligent native following, 
apparently much interested in our success. 

On the little landing- Nat discovered a number of great cases ad- 
dressed to parties in America. Trying to move them, he was convinced 
by their weight that they contained statues or fragments of sculpture. 
The native told us that they were waiting for a bark to convey them to 
the steamer at Naples. There was a quarry over yonder where they 
found many of these things. Uncle Jonah was of the opinion that 
we had chanced upon the antiquity factory, and Nat was wild to visit 
the quarry at once ; but just then a liveried footman appeared, who was 
profuse with apologies for having missed us, and said that Signor Tor- 
lonia had sent him to the inn to watch our coming and to conduct us to 
the castle. He mounted to the box beside the coachman, and directed 
him where to drive. As we drove away we saw that the intelligent native 
had thrust his under lip far out, as it seemed to me in derision. We 
were taken to a ruinous tower, with a modern addition, very smart and 



2l8 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 




new, springing like an excrescence from its side. On entering this part 
we found ourselves in a suite of airy rooms sparsely furnished in the 
Italian style, but adorned with works of art, paintings, busts on pedestals, 
inlaid cabinets, and other articles of beauty and value. These rooms, 

although they bore evidence of re- 
cent habitation, were quite empty. 
The servant seemed surprised that 
his master was not here to receive 
us, and went in search of him. A 
curtain veiled a niche or bay-window 
at the end of the room, and before it 
on a tripod lay a pillow of flowers, 
on which the word " Hygeia " was 
spelled with jasmine blossoms on 
a background of violets. I could 
hardly restrain my feminine curios- 
ity until the valet returned, evi- 
dently much disappointed that he 
could not find his master. Victoria laughed. " There is something 
fatal in my presence," she said ; " you will never meet him so long as 
I am with you." 

The servant drew aside the curtain to show us the statue which his 
master considered the gem of his collection. Uncle exclaimed with 
delight, " No woman's work here ! " and Aunt turned with a trium- 
phant, " Could anything be more beautiful ? Now, Phcebe, you can 
never compare Calliope Carter's work to this lovely antique ! " 

For a moment I was speechless, for the statue,' though armless and 
otherwise mutilated, was certainly most charming, and a sense of failure 
had taken my breath away ; but at the mention of Calliope Carter's name 
a sudden conviction came upon me like a flash of lightning. It was 
Calliope's Hygeia, or a copy of it, artfully disguised it was true, but the 
design was the same. A similar idea came to Victoria, and Nat related 



THE INTELLIGENT NATIVE. 



LAST EXCURSIONS. 22 1 

the circumstance of the first statue having been broken and sold by the 
stone-cutters to a stranger; but Uncle was very much vexed, and would 
not be convinced. 

" Is it not possible," Victoria asked, " that Mr. Bartlett bought 
the fragments and disposed of them to the Count ? " This suggestion 
visibly disturbed Uncle Jonah, and he ordered the coachman to drive 
us to the quarry of which the native had spoken. The coachman con- 
ferred with the Count's servant, who again sprang nimbly to a seat be- 
side him, and brought us to a sort of yard surrounded with open sheds, 
in which stone-cutters had been employed in " restoring " fragments by 
cementing heads and bodies together which had probably never before 
been acquainted, and manufacturing new members where they were 
needed. I say the men had been so engaged, for the establishment 
was in confusion, and a uniformed government official was reading a 
document. Nat approached him and endeavored to understand what 
all the chatter was about. " As nearly as I can make out," he reported, 
" the authorities have seized Mr. Bartlett's factory, but have not found 
the scoundrel himself. Perhaps he has gone off in company with the 
Count." 

We returned to Naples rather silent and pensive. Uncle Jonah 
especially seemed depressed, and when Victoria offered to prescribe 
for him, was not equal to his customary little joke about fair 
physicianesses. 

If our excursion was partially a failure, we found Mr. Hathaway 
beaming with delight. " Have you had a pleasant morning ? " I 
asked. 

" Glorious ! " he replied. " The charity schools are doing a most 
noble work, but there is room for more laborers. One of the most 
needed teachers has deserted his post through fear of the cholera, and 
I have thought that possibly as your Italian tour is nearly over I might 
be spared to take his place." 

Uncle looked vexed. " Certainly," he replied, rather tartly. " I 



222 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



can't see that Nat has improved any faster under your tuition than 
with Phoebe, — if she will take him again — " I ran and stopped 
Uncle's further speech with a hug. 




HAUNTS OF THE CHOLERA. 



" But, Mr. Hathaway," I said, " we are really sorry to have you 
leave our party ; must you do so ? " 

" I think the duty is plain," he replied ; " the cholera is here, and 
there will be a panic." 



LAST EXCURSIONS. 225 

" The cholera is here ! " shrieked Aunt Pen ; " then we must leave 
Naples at once." 

" It is confined to the poorest parts of the city," Mr. Hathaway 
replied, " and there is no danger for people who live properly." 

Victoria helped to pacify Aunt Pen, and she decided to delay her 
departure for a day or two, as she wished to make some purchases, — 
a set of Neapolitan coral and some lava ornaments. 

I went out with Victoria in the afternoon. " I am going to take 
some medicines to the poor people," she said; " perhaps you had better 
not go with me." 

" I would like to do so if there is no danger," I replied. " I will 
stay outside where people are really sick, but I want to see how the 
poor live here." 

It was a sad pilgrimage, for the people were so ungrateful. They 
met Victoria's kindness with scowls and mutterings. Some refused to 
take her gifts, or threw them into the street after her. Only the little 
children were thankful, and to them she explained what to do if any one 
was stricken with the dread disease. When we returned to the hotel, 
I gave my dress to Victoria to be disinfected. " You must not go 
with me again," she said, " for there is enough danger to warrant 
your uncle and aunt in their apprehensions. They will probably leave 
Naples with you to-morrow, but I must stay here. I think these poor 
people need me even more than you do." 

" But, Victoria, they will not let you stay at the hotel, and go back 
and forward among the sick." 

" Then I will open a little dispensary somewhere among the poor." 

" Oh, Victoria," I cried, " you must not. You will die." 

" No, indeed," she replied cheerfully, " I know how to take every 
precaution. In times like this fear makes more victims than the 
cholera ; and I am not in the least afraid." 

While we were chatting, a card was handed me. It was the Count ! 
"Come down too, Victoria," I exclaimed; " at last you shall see him." 



226 THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 

"I will follow," she said, "since your aunt has not come in, and 
you desire it." 

I found the Count pacing the parlor in some agitation, with his 
watch in his hand. He began speaking rapidly. " I was suddenly 
called away this morning on vitally important business. I had not 
even time to leave an apology with my servants ; but I received the 
note which you left for me, and I have kept your appointment, though 
at much inconvenience to myself and some possible risk. A steamer 
in which I have taken passage sails in half an hour. I have a great 
deal to say to you, and must do it in few words." 

" But, Count Torlonia, I did not make any appointment, or write 
you any note." 

The window-curtain behind me was thrown back, and our ghost, 
the photographer, sprang into the room. " No, Miss," he said, while 
from the opposite door two officers entered and seized the Count's 
arms ; " it was I who took the liberty to write the note. I have been 
making pretty careful observations as to the habits of this individual, 
and when he gave me the slip at Baiae, I calculated that a letter from 
you would make him show himself as quickly as anything." 

The Count looked very defiant, as he said haughtily, " You shall 
pay for this violence to an Italian nobleman ! " But at that instant 
Victoria entered the room, and fixed her calm, questioning gaze upon 
him. The man's demeanor changed instantly. He seemed to shrink 
into insignificance. Victoria, on the contrary, seemed to grow taller as 
she exclaimed, " Senhor Silva — Mr. Bartlett! is this you?" 

" Yes, Miss Delavan," replied the photographer, " this is the original 
sarpent; and I'm happy to have you here to identify him, and to 
witness the fact that Detective Jenkins is not to be fooled every 
time." 

So this is the end. The Count is an impostor who would have 
been unmasked long ago if Victoria had seen him. "Uncle says that 
Calliope shall have an extra five hundred since her work is so good 



LAST EXCURSIONS. 



227 



that it could be mistaken for the antique ; and since the mutilated 
statue is so lovely, he is quite ready to believe that the perfect one 
is much more so. We start for Sicily to-morrow, and thence to 
America, when I hope to complete my course at Vassar. Even 
Aunt makes no objection. If Vassar helped in the making of such 
a young woman as Victoria, she is quite willing to have me receive its 
impress. 

As for me, I have learned that many qualifications which I had 
not suspected are necessary for the successful following of the career 
of a society woman ; and not least important in the list, I am sure, 
are a thorough education and wide culture, a steady courage and a 
generous heart. 










<&Rp 

\\cvm 



\t> 







CHAPTER XIV. 

SICILY. 

I remember as a child how Sicily looked to me upon the map, — 
a rnisshapen animal, which the toe of the Italian boot was always 
ready to spurn. Since that time I have read and heard little, of 
Sicily, and I do not think I would have cared greatly beforehand 
to make this postscript to our Italian tour, if Uncle had not de- 
cided that the most convenient way to return to America would 
be by one of the Vincenzo Florio steamers, which ply between 
Palermo and New York. 

What is my surprise, therefore, to find that this Sicilian post- 
script contains, as that part of a woman's letter is said to do, the 
most interesting part of the whole epistle. 

Uncle sent a check to Calliope, from Naples, with directions 
as to how and where to have the statue sent; and then we bade 
good-by to Victoria and Mr. Hathaway. It has seemed strange 
to me since, that we felt no pang of compunction at leaving Vic- 
toria in such an unprotected way in a strange and plague-stricken 
city. On the contrary, all of us felt that we were a party of children 
venturing away without our natural guardian and protector. I shall 
never be so self-reliant, no, not if I live to a hundred years ; but I 
am thankful that there are such women. 

We came by way of the Lipari Isles and stopped at Lipari, first 
passing the volcanic island of Stromboli. It is a huge cone rising 
out of the sea, said to be very difficult of ascent. Lipari is formed 



SICILY. 229 

of scoria, and has a grim, forbidding look, as though its hidden 
fires might at any instant belch forth, and the lava engulf the old 
town, which slumbers picturesquely at the foot of a volcanic cone. 
We did not have time to ascend to the summit of the volcano, 
but we bought some beautiful specimens of pink and yellow sub- 
limates of sulphur, and visited the castle where brigands are con- 
fined. We heard one of them singing — what but "Dolce Napoli," 
the very song that our handsome guide at Capri had trolled forth 
so lustily? — 

"O dolce Napoli; 

O suol beato, 

Ove sorridere 

Volleil creato ; 

Tu sei P impero, 

DelF armoria ! 

Santa Lucia ! 

Santa Lucia ! " 

Was he from Naples, we wondered, or from Capri, — this brigand 
with the languishing eyes, and small gold ear-rings half hidden in 
his curly hair? There was a medal on his breast, Santa Lucia or 
the Virgin, and there were poniard scars beneath it, we were told, 
given by the soldiers who effected his capture, but not until he had 
killed three of their number and dangerously wounded two others, — 
this gentle brigand with the entrancing tenor voice. " Seeing that 
we were interested in the prisoners, the jailer explained, through 
our guide, that there was an American confined there, who had 
recently been arrested in Naples for fraudulently representing him- 
self to be an Italian nobleman. There were other charges against him 
in America, where he would eventually be transported, but the Italian 
Government desired to settle its little grievance with him first. 
Perhaps we would like to see him, — he was a distinguished-looking 
man. But with one voice we decided that we did not wish to see 
this interesting convict. It was in the crater of an extinct volcano 



230 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



./O- 



in South America that Victoria first became convinced of his per- 
fidy, and this seems a very appropriate place to leave him. 

Palermo soon lay before us, its white walls glancing in the sun- 
shine between the forest of masts in the harbor and the gray mass 

of Pellegrino in the distance. We walked 
up the long quay to the hotel, and it 
seemed to us that the city had a semi- 
Oriental look, to which it has a perfect 
right, as the Saracens had much to do 
with its architecture. The hotel is quite 
cosmopolitan ; has an Algerine cook, a 
Spanish head-waiter, and a pretty French 
fille-de-chambre, who wears bewitching caps 
and aprons, and spends her time on the 
balconies with a feather duster ostenta- 
tiously displayed, — apparently her in- 
signia of office, for I have never seen her 
use it. 

Society in Palermo is said to be very 
pleasant. There are numerous English 
residents, and we have already received 
calls from the American consul and his 
wife, and from the rector of the Episco- 
pal Church. Then we are making agreeable acquaintances in the 
house. The surly old English officer with his startled daughter, 
whom we noticed at Rome, are here. He is waiting for the arrival 
of a British man-of-war now at Gibraltar, and will then leave the 
young girl with friends here, and depart for the seat of war, where- 
ever that may be. Strange to say, we have just met a young 
American, the Dr. Stillman of whom Victoria spoke to us, who is 
also waiting for the man-of-war, as he expects to join the expedition 
as surgeon. It was by the merest chance that we happened to be 




THE FILLE-DE-CHAMBRE. 



SICILY. 



233 




MONREALE. 



introduced, and all through the old officer whom we had voted so 
disagreeable. I told him about Victoria's decision to stay and 
care for the poor people in Naples ; but he did not seem in the least 
surprised, and I thought he undervalued the action. " Was it not 
a remarkable, a really wonderful thing to do ? " I asked. 

"No," he replied, "not for her. It is only just what I should 
have expected." 

Then for an instant he looked at me, and I saw by an indescrib- 
able expression in his quiet eyes that he appreciates Victoria as 
fully as I do, and perhaps loves her more. I wonder what may 
have come between these two. 

We have visited the cathedral and other places of interest in 
the city, and have just returned from a long-to-be-remembered drive 
to Monreale, a picturesque town on the heights of Monte Caputo, 
not far from Palermo. On our way we passed the picturesque 



2 34 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



village of Bocca di Falco, and a wild gorge which leads to the con- 
vent of San Martino, then by beautiful villas and through a shady 
glen, up, up the mountain with whitey-gray olive-trees, cacti, aloes 
in long procession carrying their tall blossom-shafts like branched 

candlesticks borne aslant, orange and al- 
mond trees, bougainevilleas, and oleanders, 
on every hand, making an Eden of the 
mountain-slope. We had come to see the 
cathedral; but the ride itself was its own 
recompense, though the building, with its 
mingling of Norman and Greek styles, is 
especially interesting. The elaborately or- 
namented archway over the west gate, with 
its rich mosaics, and carvings representing 
knights in battle and grotesque beasts in- 
tricately joined by graceful foliations, was 
a study in architecture. Altogether it was 
a perfect day, and one that we shall never 
forget. If Mr. Hathaway had been with 
us, he would have given us the history of 
the entire island, with a special dissertation 
on the Sicilian Vespers. Instead of this, 
Dr. Stillman read George Eliot's poem of 
Sicily, — " How Lisa Loved the King." 
I wish I mio;ht see more of the island. 
It would be a charming plan to make a cruise around it in a 
yacht, stopping at Messina, Syracuse, and other interesting points, 
with a donkey-trip to Mount y^Etna; but possibly Scylla and Cha- 
rybdis might not be favorable to the plan. 

Day after to-morrow is my birthday, and I am to have a little com- 
pany. We have become acquainted with several people, and Aunt 
Pen says I may invite them all to a little fete in our rooms. It will be 




THE CUB. 



SICIL Y. 



2 35 



a rather heterogeneous company, for the people are not all from the 
same ranks of society. There is one English boy here with his tutor, 
whom Nat calls the Cub. He affects great carelessness in his dress, 
and what he supposes are " Americanisms " in language, though 
such very stupid slang I never heard in America. I am almost 
afraid to include him in my list, for I fear he will disgrace us ; but I 
am confident that he needs a glimpse of good society. Then there 
is a sweet girl who has a wonderful voice and is to be a public 
singer. I think the stricter people 
look at her askance ; but it seems 
to me that is just the way to drive 
her into more questionable com- 
pany, and that she needs our sup- 
port and encouragement, for good 
and gentle she certainly is. We 
have, too, a sallow old gentleman 
who is very rich and very solitary, 
troubled with a fortune that he 
does not know what to do with, 
and a complaint of the liver. I 
shall invite him, though I don't be- 
lieve he will come. I wish Ameri- 
cans would pay more attention to 
decorum while abroad. The Cub told Nat that he liked Americans 
because they were so jolly unconventional. He met a party of 
them at Smyrna, and the young ladies walked along the principal 
promenade with fez caps on their heads. 

The Cub came to breakfast wearing a rubber overcoat, and Aunt 
Pen was so indignant that she would not recognize him. I think 
he was rather ashamed of himself, and I have noticed since that he 
tries to copy Nat's neckties. 

Besides the people I have mentioned, who interest me, Aunt Pen 




THE SOLITARY GENTLEMAN. 



236 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



thinks, simply because other people would find them uninteresting, I 
am to have some titled personages, — a pretty marchioness who wears 
impossible hats, especially arranged, Nat says, to accommodate her 
coronet inside ; and a member of the Royal Academy, who is the lion 
of all assemblages. The entertainment has been left entirely to me, 
and I have my ideas. 

The New York steamer has just arrived. I shall only have 

time for my birthday party, and then 
we take passage for home. Among 
the passengers who have come out 
on the steamer is, strange to say, Vic- 
toria's father, Mr. Delavan. As soon 
as he heard that we were going to 
Naples, he became alarmed and started 
for Italy. At least, this is my inter- 
pretation of his conduct, though he 
says he had thought previously of 
joining his daughter this summer. 

My fete has proved a surprise- 
party indeed. The solitary gentleman 
did come, and sent me in advance a 
basket of exquisite flowers. The Cub 
appeared with his bristling hair nicely 
cut, and his awkward hands squeezed 
into new gloves. I had asked our musical friend to sing for me ; and 
she sang " Flee as a Bird," and " Consider the Lilies," so simply and 
sweetly that every one was delighted. I saw the Marchioness talking 
with her afterward, and there were tears in her noble eyes. Dr. Still- 
man read for us again. This time he chose " The Sicilian's Tale," 
from Longfellow's " Wayside Inn." 

Afterward Mr. Delavan came and chatted with me as he sipped 
an ice. " Every one says this is one of the most charming evenings 




THE MARCHIONESS. 



SICILY. 



237 



he has ever enjoyed," he said ; " but I think I am the only one 
who has discovered that the character of the evening has been dis- 
tinctly religious." 

" Then you have penetrated Phoebe's little scheme," Nat replied. 
" She wanted to see if she could make 
these people enjoy a prayer-meeting 
without knowing it." 

" Not quite a prayer-meeting," I ex- 
plained; "but I do think our social 
enjoyment may be of a higher order 
than it often is." 

" That is just like Victoria," said 
Dr. Stillman. Mr. Delavan started, and 
scrutinized the young man ; whereupon 
I introduced him, and Mr. Delavan said, 
"Excuse my brusqueness; I thought 
at first you were speaking of my daugh- 
ter." Then I explained the situation, 
and the two were soon talking so earn- 
estly that I was quite forgotten. Shortly 
after this we were startled by a loud 
knock ; the door was flung open, and 
Mr. Hathaway stood with his hand upon 
the knob, but so aged and changed 
that we scarcely knew him. Aunt 
Pen threw up her hands in dismay. 
" You bring bad news ! " she exclaimed. 

" I trust not," he replied gravely, " but Victoria is very ill." 

Then there was consternation and confusion. I wanted to go 
to her at once, but Mr. Delavan would not allow it. 

"It is cholera, child," he said sternly, "and you would be running 
a great risk where you can do no good. It is fortunate that I am 




MR. HATHAWAY STOOD WITH HIS 
HAND UPON THE KNOB." 

" Some one is dead ! " 



2 3 8 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



here. I will take Dr. Stillman with me, and we shall be enough ; for 
Mr. Hathaway tells me that she has a devoted nurse in the person 

of an Italian woman whom she has bene- 
fited. We will do all that can be done. 
If we were only there at this moment ! 
Mr. Hathaway came in one of those lateen- 
sailed feluccas, and the regular steamer 
will not leave until to-morrow afternoon." 
It was then that the Cub came to the 
rescue like an angel of light. " Lord 
Luffaway has left his steam-yacht with 
me for a week, and I '11 take you across," 
he said; "I'd like nothing better." 

And so they have gone, and I stand 
aloof from my dearest friend, bound hand 
and foot by Aunt and Uncle, who will 
not let me go. It is wicked, cruel ; and 
if I were only of age this birthday I 
would openly revolt. Dr. Stillman has de- 
"aunt pen threw up her hands dined the position which he had thought 

so advantageous and which was just within 
his grasp. The British officer went away from the party grumbling 
like a tolerably active volcano, and charging him with fickleness 
and indifference to his own interests. If he had but known it was 
faithfulness instead, and regard for dearer interests than mere posi- 
tion ! Oh, I cannot leave her so ! I must make one last appeal. 

I have been successful, and we return to Naples by the regular 
boat to-morrow, — Uncle and I. Aunt will remain here with Nat, 
awaiting the result. I am all impatience to be off, and tremble lest 
I may be too late. 




NAPLES AGAIN. 



NAPLES AGAIN. 



239 



I have seen Victoria. They say she is better, in fact, out of 
danger, but she was sadly changed, — so pale and quiet ; but there 
was a heavenly joy and peace in her face instead of the old animation. 
Her father led me to her bedside, where Dr. Stillman sat holding her 
white hand, though I do not think he was feeling her pulse. For 
a moment it seemed to me that I was punished for my half-desertion 7 
and that she really did not need me ; but she turned to me quickly, 
with her old look of interest, and exclaimed, " Why, Phcebe, child ! 
I thought you were on your w r ay to America." 

I do not remember what I said, only that I cried and laughed 
until Dr. Stillman told me that I would excite her; and then I be- 
came calm for fear of being banished, and had the satisfaction of 
seeing that she was glad of my coming. She called me, mistakenly 
enough, a heroine, and said I had braved death for her sake. But 
they would not let me stay and nurse her, for of that there is no 
need, and as soon as she is able to bear the ride, she is to be taken 
to Sorrento, to recover in a villa that overlooks the gorge where 
Agnes lived. If it were not that I am sure she is happier in the 
thought that I did not desert, I should think my return an unneces- 
sary one ; but I know that my love is dear to her, eclipsed though 
it may well be by the greater one which now broods over her. 
For Victoria and Dr. Stillman understand each other at last, 
and are to be married some time, though not, she insists, until 
she has finished her medical course and obtained her degree. This 
possibly accounts for the absurd happiness which beams in both 
their faces and is reflected in a lesser degree from that of Mr. 
Delavan. 

After all, I cannot flatter myself that I should have been greatly 
missed if I had gone on to America ; but I could not have borne the 



240 



THREE VASSAR GIRLS IN ITALY. 



dreadful uncertainty, and to see her so nearly well and so perfectly 
happy is worth a far longer journey. 

And now we hurry back to Aunt Pen, who is doubtless consumed 
with anxiety on my account, and then away over the broad Atlantic 




"UNDER NEW ENGLAND APPLE-TREES." 



to a certain home under New England apple-trees, where I shall look 
over broad meadows, and nestle down in the clover and kiss the 
very ground for delight ; for better than Italy, better than any other 
land, is one's own dear home ! 



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